like it; but being afraid to disoblige St. Peter, on account of the great power he has over him through the means of the church. "How is Martin Luther?' said St. Peter, after a little. "Indeed, he's no worse than he was,' replied the devil: he has as much Newcastle coal over him as I can spare.' [You know, boys, the coal is dear at this season of the year.]

"I think it's almost time to tell the poor Catholics,' said St. Peter, 'how that fellow betrayed them, and how it was that the Reformation was only a ruction* of King Henry VIII.'s, in the regard of his wife, that the good pope wouldn't allow him to put her away; for you know very well that it's all your doings, Mr. Nicholas [You see St. Peter spoke civil to him, for peace and quietness], to make the Bible people go about slandering the holy church.'

"Then what would you have me do, St. Peter?' answered the devil; 'sure if it wasn't for the Bible people I wouldn't have a born creature to keep me company; and all the brimstone would be burnt out for nothing. It isn't for me to go to confession and get absolution, now that I'm thriving upon the lies for upwards of a million of years.'

"True for you,' says St. Peter; only as I'm a real Catholic, and an Irishman into the bargain, I can't stand by and see such murder going on under my very eyes. Now, here 's Father Tom, as decent a man as any in all Ireland, and that's saying more than if I was to search all over the earth for the likes of him, he hasn't as much to live upon as Sir Harcourt Lees feeds one of his horses with; the people, you see, don't take it to heart, but pretend to be very poor, because the Biblemen make them pay tithes; and then, when Easter and Christmas come round, they've always the ready excuse, that the proctor took their pigs, and their poultry, and their firkins of butter. If Father Tom had his deservings, he'd have all the tithes to himself, and be rolling in his carriage. Instead of that, he has hardly a drop to wet his lips; and many 's the fast-day he's obliged to eat a rasher of bacon for dinner, because he can't get a bit of fish or a whisp of cabbage for love or money. Now, tell the honest truth, and no shame to you isn't this meeting that's to take place to-morrow entirely instigated by yourself, that the Bible people may get a heap of money out of the pockets of the poor Catholics?

"I'll tell no lie about it,' said Ould Nick, it's entirely a child of my own.' "Mind that, Father Tom,' said St. Peter, in a whisper, winking over slyly at me. And tell me also, Mr. Nicholas,' said he, didn't they put some ugly drops into Father Tom's little cruiskeen, that they might prevent him from going to the meeting-house to expose them?'

"You're too hard upon me,' said the devil, scratching his head, as if he didn't know what to say; but if I was to speak the truth, I don't think there's one amongst them but would poison the priests, root and branch.'

"And wouldn't it be the sin of the world for Father Tom to waste his time making speeches, and arguing with them, when it's of no manner of use at all; and when you know very well, that the more he'd talk to them, the worse they'd be after; and that all they'd do would be to pick up the knowledge that would fall from him as plentiful as blackberries in summer, and then go about the country passing it off as their own?'

"I'll have no more to do with you,' said the devil, getting into a great passion, and taking up the Bible and the tracts; 'you wouldn't leave me a skreed to put on me, if you could: so I'll follow my own way, and go home and write advertisements for another meeting somewhere else.'

* A row, or fight.

"Then I'd advise you,' said St. Peter, never to have a meeting in Father Tom's neighbourhood again; for you see you're defeated this time, and will be as long as your head is hot.'

"With that St. Peter put up his finger to his nose, and after nodding his head at me, got up on horseback on a horse that was waiting for him, and rode off, leaving the devil in a dolderum behind him. Just at that moment there was a roar like an earthquake, every thing seemed as if it was swimming round and round, and I couldn't see the devil or any one else for the smoke and, with a terrible start, as if I got a blow on the head, I awoke out of my sleep; and there was Shamus, the cook, shaking me as if he thought I was in a trance.

"Get up, Father Tom,' says he, if you're alive; you're asleep since last night, and that's nearly two days ago. The Bible-men are all gone off to Limerick, and there's not a soul in the place but 's breaking all the windows of the Orange justices of the peace.'

"Fie upon you, Shamus!' says I; and is that the way you come to spoil my beautiful dream?'

"Isn't my dream out now, boys? And is it any wonder after the warning I had from St. Peter, that I didn't think of going to the meeting? Sorrow a Bible-man you'll ever see in the spot again, mark my word; and that's better than all the palaver of speeches you'll hear from this day forward till the hour of your deaths. Amen."

Out of all this humorous foolery a little moral comes flowering up, which is not unworthy of notice. See by what means the injustice and oppression of unwarrantable interference with the creeds of men may be defeated and ridiculed. Improper attempts at conversion have no other effect than to heighten the zeal to which they are opposed, to work new channels of superstition, and to confirm the influence of the doctrines they are intended to overturn. If there had been no such exhibitions in Ireland as Bible controversies, there would have been no such sermons as those which are here caricatured if there had been no such missionaries as Gregg, Mortimer, and O'Sullivan, there would have been no such priests as Father Tom or Father Andy.

an

This may be a small satisfaction to some people for the profane ribaldry which has sometimes sullied the controversies and addresses of the Irish priesthood. But it ought to be remembered that there is as much ribaldry at one side as the other, with less excuse on the part of the Protestants, whose audiences are at least better instructed, having also the best of the argument, quoad the loaves and fishes. But these matters are much altered now, and considerably improved, so far as the Roman Catholics are concerned. Civil equality has elevated the moral tone of the people, and the priest is no longer omnipotent. So long as it was a point of honour affair of sympathy and integrity-to maintain the ascendancy, and protect even the frailties of the priest not for his own sake, but for the sake of the principle of liberty of conscience which was assailed in his person, and of which he was the involuntary apostle-so long a thousand indiscretions were concealed in the necessity of union for a common object. But the act of Emancipation broke up this unnatural, unhealthy, and dangerous state of society. Public opinion is dimly but gradually expanding in Ireland. It could not co-exist with slavery; and, when it shall have gained sufficient strength to make itself felt over the country, we shall witness a miracle amongst the Irish not less extraordinary or gratifying than the temperance progress of Father Mathew.

MODERN TRAVELLERS AND TRAVELLING.

THERE was a time when to have seen 66 foreign parts" was deemed a matter of distinction; when a young gentleman who had made "the grand tour" was an object of ill-suppressed envy ; and when play-wrights and humourists, whose means could scarcely command an occasional jaunt beyond the reach of Bow bells' melodies, found vent for their vexation at not having been abroad, by ridiculing and caricaturing those who had. Those times have departed. The travelled fops with which Foote amused our grandfathers would be to us most vapid and unmeaning; and even in the Doricourt of Mrs. Cowley, a modern audience can see little to disturb the dozing serenity to which the even blamelessness of his character is wont to consign them. Some venerable enthusiast will now and then break in upon the silence of the assembly by the vehemence of his unaccompanied applause, when a virtuous sentiment in condemnation of fops and foreigners is given with all the traditional point and emphasis which the actors of to-day have reverently inherited from those of another age, who in the same parts and with the same words, could draw down plaudits that made the crazy walls of the theatre rock and tingle to their very base; but to the many there appears now but scanty patriotism in the depreciation of our neighbours; and speeches once rapturously cheered, but in our days endured with patience, would be even less leniently dealt with, were our favour not conciliated by a pardonable partiality for what has once been admitted to the freedom of the play-house, by an unwillingness to condemn what has once been stamped with the approbation of our fathers.

Five and twenty years of peace, backed by the levelling powers of steam, have wrought strange revolutions in the land. Without going back to the remote ages of the Stuarts, when the rider in charge of the Edinburgh mail would stop at one alehouse to aid the digestion of his dinner by an afternoon's nap, and at another to take the diversion of a game of bowls, let us simply recall to our recollection the state of things some twenty years ago, when the first steamer was started to run between Calais and Dover, to the no small astonishment and consternation of all the gossiping goodies of either sex.

We

It was in 1819, if we remember rightly, that the first attempt was made to establish steam navigation between the French and English coasts. have still a lively recollection of the excitement that ensued. We had newly arrived in Paris; and among the English, whether residents or visitors, the daring experiment was the almost exclusive topic wherever two or three of our countrymen happened to congregate. Few were bold enough to say that they would “ tempt Providence" by choosing so dangerous a conveyance for their return home, and many a grave papa was glad to shelter his own apprehensions by an assumed anxiety for the nerves and sensibilities of his wife and daughters. Little did he anticipate that in less than twenty years a fleet of nearly two thousand of the perilous craft would be navigating the noble rivers of England, and bringing her bustling marts into close and constant connection with the remotest harbours of the globe.

In those days a man who had been to France was somebody, and if he had been to Italy he could afford to give himself airs; but if he had seen the Pyramids, or had smoked his pipe and sipped his coffee on the ottoman of a Turkish pasha, he was a made man: he was a favoured guest where

lords manœuvred in vain for invitations; and if he happened to be a Tory, and could write a flaming article for Blackwood or the Quarterly, the doors of the Foreign Office opened in obedience to his voice, and consulships and legations were placed within the easy reach of his ambition. It was in those days that the Travellers' Club was first instituted. It was not then, as it has since become, a mere aristocratic lounge. Those who had "qualified" themselves by wandering a thousand miles away from their native shores, were still a chosen band. It was not every peer who had been to Naples, and merchants could not then steam it to Lisbon with a tolerable certainty of being on 'change again in a fortnight, No; the Travellers' Club was a respectable institution in those days, for your bonâ fide travellers then were respectable and respected men.

Now-a-days, who is there that is not a traveller? An attorney's clerk may steam it to St. Petersburg and coach it to Moscow, and be back before the long vacation is over; ay, though he do Warsaw and Berlin by the way. The shopboy in Liverpool, after his Saturday's labours are ended, embarks his cherished person on board a steamer for Dublin; stares at Nelson's pillar in Sackville Street, and Wellington's obelisk in the Phoenix Park; and after hearing Paddy's Opera in the cathedral where Swift once presided, and visiting two or three meeting-houses (the best schools for flirtation in the world, as is known to every visitor to the Irish metropolis), he may reembark about bedtime, after laying in a decent cargo of whiskey punch, the fumes of which will be pretty well exhaled by the following morning-when he may reckon with tolerable certainty upon being home in time to open his master's shop at the wonted hour, and soberly resume the cares and duties of the week. An excursion to the Emerald Isle was a journey twenty years ago; the youngster of Liverpool would be laughed at now by his companions if he ventured to call it a trip.

Railroads and steamboats, in a few years hence, will be "laid on" in an uninterrupted circle round the world. Indeed, last year a prospectus was circulated in the city, and received there with some favour, which would nearly have completed the line. It was proposed to establish regular steamers between London and Jamaica, from that island to the Isthmus of Panama, then along the western coast of South America, and thence to Australia. A steamer from Sydney to India would have made the circle complete.

Before the establishment of steamboats between London and Hamburg, a journey from the one city to the other was an undertaking to be reflected on for months before it was undertaken; and merchants, to avoid the uncertainty of a tedious voyage by sea, were fain to endure the fatigue of a land journey through Holland and Westphalia, over a series of the most execrable roads in Europe. The more daring traveller, who was willing to tempt the dangers of the deep, regardless of the shoals and sands of the Dutch coast and the boisterous currents of the North Sea, had a journey of certain peril and most uncertain duration before him. From London he had to travel down by land to Harwich, the packet station for Holland, Hamburg, and Sweden, the patronage of which was in those days deemed sufficient to secure at all times the return of two government members for that ancient and independent borough. At Harwich he embarked, and with a fair wind he might hope to reach the mouth of the Elbe in thirty or forty hours. Fair winds, however, were not to be had for the mere asking; and sometimes whole weeks elapsed before the little post-office schooner could reach her destination. Day after day the impatient traveller would watch for a breeze while becalmed in Harwich harbour; or perhaps after beating to windward for eight or ten days, the wished-for light-house of Heligoland or Cuxhaven

would cheer his heart before he crept into his wearisome berth, as he fondly hoped, for the last night. And in the morning - he would wake to learn that while he slept it had "come on to blow from the land;" and the packet with her anxious inmates would be running briskly before the wind, with a fair prospect of getting a glimpse of old England or bonny Scotland before another day was added to the history of time.

The longest journey, however, comes to an end some time or another, and it may fairly be inferred that sooner or later the packet seldom failed to reach Cuxhaven, where the mails and the passengers were safely landed, to be forwarded to Hamburg in open carts, and over roads of which the imagination of an untravelled Englishman would not easily be able to conjure up an image.

How changed are these matters now! A trip to Hamburg by one of the splendid steam-ships of the General Steam Navigation Company, which start from London twice a week, and sometimes oftener, is a luxury of which none who has once enjoyed it will not long for a repetition. Even those unhappy beings who, martyrs to sea sickness, have never "danced in triumph o'er the waters wide," must still look back with satisfaction to the exactness with which they were enabled to anticipate the termination of their sufferings; but for him whose soul does not "sicken o'er the heaving wave," and whose heart can sympathise with the feelings of the gallant fabric that carries him to his journey's end in despite of opposing gales, there is a thrilling sense of enjoyment in being thus made the participator in the triumph of human science over three elements at once, which the uninitiated cannot conceive, the impression of which no lapse of time can ever efface.

Only fourteen years have yet elapsed since the idea of crossing the North Sea in steamboats was first projected. The undertaking electrified the whole mercantile world with astonishment, and few were those who believed in the practicability of the scheme. And now - the Hamburg steamer starts from off the Tower of London as the clock strikes; and provided the wind blow not an absolute gale in her teeth, and the atmosphere remain tolerably free from fog, her captain can generally tell within half an hour the time when he shall be at his journey's end. In forty-eight or fifty hours the traveller now effects, without fatigue, in the enjoyment of every comfort on the way, and at little more than half the cost, a trip which before 1825 scarcely ever occupied less than eight or ten days, often more than three weeks, and which was always accompanied by great fatigue, and frequently by no little danger.

The spirited company just mentioned, who, only a few years ago, by their daring and comprehensive plans, threw all preceding enterprises of a similar character into the shade, have however been no less signally eclipsed themselves within the last twelve months. The experiment of navigating the Atlantic by means of steam has been successfully tried, and the little trips across the North Sea or along the Mediterranean have become mere matters of common-place, to be spoken of with indifference, and to be contemplated without admiration. The good people of New York now anticipate the arrival of the Great Western or the British Queen, with almost as much exactness as we look for the Dover mail in London; and a traveller on leaving England in one of these floating palaces, with the intention of travelling by the railroad to Pittsburg, and descending the Ohio and the Mississippi in a steamer, may, if he be well acquainted with the capabilities of his route, be able on leaving home to name the day on which he will arrive at New Orleans. He who twenty, nay ten years ago, had anticipated such results, would have been set down by sober-minded people for a cracked-brained