tion, we must attribute the acknowledged evils existing among others. My friend too, always mild, kind, and charitable on other subjects, generally laid aside these characteristics when on this, and assailed the established church with the weapons of ridicule, sarcasm, scorn, and bitterness, which certainly produced on me the contrary effect to what was intended. He seemed

to me to pay little attention to the spiritual wants of the poor deluded Romanists, rather seeking to convert episcopalians into dissenters than papists into Christians. Measuring all things by the standard of the written word, I became more fully convinced the more I examined the matter, that there was no just cause why a believer should quit the communion of a church clearly built on the foundation of the prophets and apostles; and even under the disadvantages of such a location as I have described, I continued firm in my attachment to her. Some people told me I ought to take higher ground in upholding the episcopal establishment of this country: if they will point out to me any ground higher than the top of the rock whereon I believe her to stand, that rock being Christ, I will take it; but none, none so high, none so sure can be found. Apostolical succession in office is a good thing when the succession in doctrine is equally clear; otherwise they who now officiate in the mosque of Omar, standing on the site of the temple in Jerusalem, and he who sits supreme in the see of Rome, the man of sin, and son of perdition, may respectively claim succession to the Aaronic priesthood and the apostolic ministry. I do not deny that a

regular succession exists in the British churches, derived from an apostolic mission, long before Augustine or any other Romish emissary set foot on our soil to pollute the stream; but I should never for a moment dream of adducing that as an argument against one who calls in question the scripturality of our church, since in so doing I might admit the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth to a participation in the privileges which none but the lamb's pure wife has any claim to. For my own part, I had never heard of such a thing, when God enabled me to stand firm as a member of this maligned church of England; and it is one of the many cases in which I had nothing to unlearn, just because man had taught me nothing, but all I knew was drawn from the clear fountain of eternal truth, opened in the pages of that precious volume, for the gift of which all praise and glory be to God, through Christ Jesus, now and for ever!

I AM now to bring you into the stirring scenes of that time and place where the rebellious spirit of popish agitation had just broken out afresh in Ireland. An invitation to pass some weeks in the county Kilkenny led us to it as guests; and inducements that it was not easy to resist fixed us there as residents for three years. In this part of my narrative no disguise is needful; the facts are before the world, and the estimable man who was made the first victim of this atrocious conspiracy is gone to his rest, after patiently enduring years of persecution, of exile, and of bodily and mental suffering induced by the scenes he was compelled to pass through.

Vicarsfield, the beautiful parsonage of Dr. Hamilton, is in the county, ten Irish miles from the town, of Kilkenny. Knoctopher is the parish; and at that time the old church was standing, about half a mile from the vicarage, which stood secluded, withdrawn from the

public road, nestled in the rich foliage of many fine trees, and adorned with lovely pleasure grounds. It was the happy privilege of that truly pious minister to originate the clerical meetings which were so eminently, so extensively blessed to the clergy of that diocese, over which his father had presided as bishop. For many years they were held at his house, and truly rich were these seasons to all who inhabited it! Dr. Hamilton was a man of fine mind, deep erudition, unbounded benevolence, and christian sweetness that endeared him to every one. His income was considerable; and while exercising the rites of a truly Irish hospitality on a noble scale, he expended a large proportion of that income in works of charity equally judicious, liberal, and impartial. He had under his roof thirteen poor girls, who were educated, maintained, taught in all the requisites of good household servants, and finally placed out in the families of his friends. Mrs. Hamilton seemed to have her heart in this school, over which a very competent mistress presided, and a more beautifully ordered little nursery of valuable domestics I never saw. Besides this, large benefactions were distributed, in clothing, fuel, and other necessaries, among the poor of the parish, without any regard to religious distinction; and as the Romanists amounted to above twelve hundred, while the Protestants could not muster one, and the former were infinitely more necessitous than the latter, of course nearly all went to them. I dwell upon these things and upon the exceeding kind-heartedness of the good clergyman and his affectionate partner towards

their poor neighbours, because it throws additional light on the real origin of those acts which the English people were made to believe resulted from oppression on the part of the Protestant clergy.

When first I went to Knocktopher in the summer of 1821, no open act of violence had been committed, or publicly threatened, in its immediate vicinity; but already the name of Captain Rock was becoming formidable. The place borders on Tipperary, from whence came nocturnal parties, scouring the country and alarming the inhabitants on a small scale, while the prelude to much darker scenes was to be traced in the wide circulation of what were called the prophecies of Pastorini. A Dr. Walmsley, a popish priest, had written a commentary on the book of Revelation, under that name, wherein he explained the ascent of the locusts out of the bottomless pit to prefigure the rise of Protestantism with Luther at its head;-calculating the date of their continuance from 1525, and fixing its termination in 1825. Extracts from this impudently mischievous work were disseminated in every possible form among the Romanists; they were translated into Irish, sent in large numbers to every district to be circulated by careful agents: published in handbills, exhibited in placards, and sung in doggrel rhyme through the streets. There was no article of their faith more devoutly believed by the besotted people than that in 1825 the Protestants of Ireland and of every other country were, by divine appointment to be put to death, except such as should recant; and while the lower