which they were treated completely won their simple hearts. Oh, had I but then looked on them as the probable descendants of God's own Israel, sank in heathen darkness, rendered visible by the lurid glare of Popish idolatry, and myself as a Gentile, a Protestant, a depository of the knowledge that alone maketh wise unto salvation, how precious would those golden opportunities have been in my sight! When I try to number up the sins of omission alone, their number is greater than I can compass. If there was not a fountain opened for sin and uncleanness, and if the way to that fountain were not also open to me, where should I hide myself in the great and terrible day!

C. E.

THERE appears to be great and heavy calamities hanging over Europe at this time, and if it should please Almighty God that a few drops of that pelting shower should descend upon the heads of his own family, murmur not, but rather rejoice in the delightful consciousness of being individually locked in the concave of Jehovah's shield.-Rev. W. Howels, March, 1831.

AN EXCURSION.

No. II.

'Arcades ambo

Et cantare pares et respondere parati.'-Virg. Ecl. vii. 5.

MADAM,

AFTER the love of self to which all other affections, I think, may either mediately or immediately be traced, the next affection in the category is the love of country; and this passion I believe is much stronger in the extremes of society than in the means, that is, in the most illiterate or the most refined of the human species; and the men who by their talents and genius have adorned the history of their native land are ever the proudest boast of its inhabitants. The poet Gray drank deeply at this well, and all must acknowledge that refinement could hardly arrive at a higher polish in the mind of any than it did in his mind; and had it not, he never could have penned these lines:

'Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

:

And on a smaller scale you will perceive my meaning more fully illustrated in the dialogue that ensues: 'What,' said I to the intelligent guide who shewed me these things, 'what is the reason, think you, after all your advantages in this fine seat of learning and

amid so much natural talent as, unquestionably, your countrymen possess, that your scholars give so few books to the world, as the produce of their labours? What is the reason that Trinity College, Dublin, publishes nothing?'

'O see,' said he, ‘if you will please to ask some of these young men just coming out of the hall the reason of this matter, they will, I know, answer for themselves.' And with that he ran up to a student that approached, and told him that a gentleman from England was making enquiries respecting the university, on some of which he was unable to satisfy him; and begged that he would be so good as tell the gentleman what he wished to know. It is no exaggeration to denominate this young student a tall Irishman, for he was certainly one of the tallest men I had ever seen, and almost as thin in proportion as he was tall, having a countenance replete with intelligence, and that displayed a playfully good disposition. He told me that he should be happy to give me any information in his power, respecting the Dublin university; and the day being fixed, we proposed a walk in the beautiful park attached to the college, that we might there converse without interruption or reserve.

When I first commenced: 'I am come, sir, all the way from England to visit this, your seat of learning, and make myself as much acquainted with the method of instruction pursued here as my time and opportunities will permit ; and from what I have already witnessed, I imagine that I have discovered a cause sufficient to account for the motive that brought me hither.' To which the tall student replied,

And, sir, may I know the especial object to which we are indebted for the honour you do us?'

'It is,' said I, 'to ascertain for myself the reason why your university obtained the appellation of silent sister?'

Silent sister!' said my friend, It must have been in England you conferred on us that title; and it only proves to my mind, to a demonstration, that in England you know but little of us Irish; for had you waited for two months yet to come, and then paid us your visit, when we expeet an election to take place for a member to represent us in your senate, you should then declare, so far from the Dublin university meriting the title of the silent sister, that as she is the youngest and the most beautiful, so is she the loudest by much of the three. For we are threatened with a whig-radical candidate; and if he only make his appearance on the hustings, he will prove that we are not so mealy-mouthed as you may suppose us to be, and a thousand tongues will exclaim with one accord, as they did on a recent occasion, when they proposed a Stock (Dr. Stock) to represent us in parliament, and we cried out P-Shaw!" (Shaw, the Right Hon. R. Shaw, one of the present members for the university) we will have neither stock nor stone among us.'

‘O,' said I, interrupting this burst of zeal, ‘Sir, you quite mistake my meaning. I did not allude to your power or willingness to speak out in the time of danger, for we in England are all satisfied on that point; but you never write any books here.'

'Write books!' he exclaimed, 'have you been to our library?'

6

'Yes,' I replied,' and a magnificent library it is.' Then why do you blame us for not writing books, when we are not able to read one thousandth part of

those already written to our hand? Until we shall have done reading those, or feel ourselves more adequate to write better, we judge it prudent to let writing worse books alone. And it is my own father, the Rev. that can write when once the mood seizes him! He wrote a book about ten years back, and a funny book it was, for it made every body laugh at the stories it contained, except the priests, for you must understand that their reverences and my father seldom pull well together.'

' And what, may I ask, was the subject matter of this pleasant volume of your father's?'

'Why,' said my young friend, 'it was tales concerning the Irish natives of the present and olden times, which he picked up among the peasants and devotees of the seven churches in the county Wicklow, that wonderfully wild and beautifully romantic place. I dare say you may have heard, from travellers who visited that part of the kingdom, something of the seven churches of Wicklow, and the Dargle, and the glen of the Dowine, and the Meeting of the Waters. And other like stories did my father relate, in that same book, which he collected along the western banks and solitary isles of the deep rolling Shannon, and which he styles, 'A Tour to Lough Derg.' Ah, Sir, you English people may blame us for not writing; but my father declared to me, that these places appeared to him so fraught with many beauties, that he was quite unable to describe them ; and, deemed it far better to allow foreigners who should visit our shores to judge for themselves, if they do not beggar description. But then,' with a deep-drawn sigh he added, yet still there exists a moral blight on these fair scenes, and Popery has