week the poor warden found himself in possession of an empty school-room. This is, as has been said, no uncommon story; the system is the same all over Ireland. From the national schools of Ireland the influence of the priesthood has banished history. On all other points the education given is most excellent; but a lessonbook in which the mention of the Reformation might lead to inquiries and further enlightenment, is a sealed book to the Irish peasant. Instead of it are put into circulation scraps from the history of Ireland only, taken from various periods, and strung together in such a way as is best calculated to foster the prejudices already in existence, and strengthen the bands which already too closely bind the peasantry in subjection to clerical authority.

"Will you lend me an egg, miss ?" a woman said one day to a lady, a member of an opposite communion to her own.

"Why do you not say, 'give me,' instead of 'lend?'" the lady said. "You know you do not intend to repay it."

"Because it is for the priest's breakfast, miss, and you might not like to give it. He is coming to give my poor sister, the crathure, the last sacrament, and the neighbours have helped me to make up everything but the egg. It is a scarce season. His reverence is to get half-a-crown, and a tea breakfast, and bacon, and an egg."

Yet this poor creature lived in a mud hovel, without even a window in it, and her earnings averaged sixpence a day. But then the priest must be paid, and well paid too. When a funeral takes place the priest's dues are far in excess of what might be expected, knowing of what paupers his flock are composed. "Canting the corpse," as in the northern districts it is called. When the coffin is brought into the chapel and laid on trestles, the priest stands on the steps of the altar holding a plate on which are to be deposited the offerings of the faithful. If a delft plate, so much the better, half-crowns come down sonorously. As the money is deposited the priest proclaims the name of the giver and the amount of the gift. "Patrick Donovan has given five shillings to pray for the soul of Mary Maloney." "John Macdermot has given eighteenpence to pray for the soul of Mary Maloney." "John Millar's wife has given one shilling, &c.," accompanied occasionally by running comments on the niggardliness or generosity, as it may be, of the gift. A handsome sum of money is looked upon as a proof of the respectability or popularity of the family of the deceased, and reciprocity of this generosity is always expected.

The man who will not give liberally to pray for his neighbour's soul cannot expect that the neighbour's family will in turn contribute handsomely when he has "got a corpse of his own."

A respectable farmer's wife died; she was not in a high rank of life, it is true; but from the fact of her husband's brother being the Roman Catholic bishop of the diocese, "an illigant buryin" was looked for by the neighbours.

"Shure an' there'll be a great cantin' of her," a woman said on her way to the funeral. "Our Johnnie is not goin', for barrin' he sowld his Sunday shute, he had nothin' for the corpse,-rest to her sowl, for she was a good woman."

The obsequies over, the same woman was asked, "Well, Mary, and how much did Mrs.

bring?"

"Bring! she only brought nine pounds"-adding, in a tone of exultation, "I could nearly have brought as much myself, poor and all as I am. Just wait till ye see when my time comes, the way the money will come down. But ye see, miss, the quality at the funeral was all priests, and it is all take, take, take with them; never givin' to any of us."

Truly, it is all "take, take" with them, but the surprising part of it is, how they make their flocks give. One secret is, the sense the people have of the superior knowledge possessed by the cleric, and his knowledge is made to be power also.

The people have a great respect for learning; that is, in the abstract, and the less they have of it themselves the more they admire it in others. "A great scholard" is a high term of praise.

A country girl had a lover who was a schoolmaster, but unfortunately she could neither read nor write; even the letters which he wrote her must be read by some erudite neighbour. Knowing that she must be indebted to some one of superior scholarship for the knowledge of her lover's sentiments, she begged him always, when writing, to insert something 'oncommon fine" in it. In accordance with her wishes, the letter was generally inscribed on the first page, and the inner leaf covered with pothooks and haugers, and capital letters embellished with abundance of flourishes.

This was very fine, but in time the neighbours grew accustomed to such specimens of erudition, and ceased to be dazzled by such unusual acquirements. Something higher must be attempted, and the lover invoked the poetic muse to this effect::

"The church steeple is high, dear Jane,

And the windows is made of glass, dear Jane,

I am your first love, dear Jane,

And I thrust you'll be my last, dear Jane."

"Dear Jane" was more in love than ever, and this time the neighbours felt that the correspondence was taking a tone much higher, far above the ordinary level of such love letters. So Jane carried the epistle to the house of her clergyman, where, it was rumoured, "one of the ladies knew poetry." And very happy she was, trudging home with an answering epistle "as fine as anything,"

with a postage-stamp on it, to go by post to the enamoured swain.

'Do you ever feel anxious about your soul?" a clergyman said to a woman who obstinately refused to come to church.

'Me, sir," she said; "I am sure I never do, for I have read a heap of good books in my time."

The etiquette of courtship and marriage is not carried on with exactly the same outward ceremonies as in Belgravia.

The young man inquires of the young woman, "Will she keep company?"-i.e., will she receive his attentions, allow him to walk with her after working hours, see her home on Sundays from worship, smoke his pipe at her mother's fireside every evening, have the first dance at a barn meeting, and occasionally sit with his arm round her waist "right forenent the neighbours?" Supposing she is "agreeable," as the phrase is, this state of things continues until the young woman puts an end to it by either dismissing the swain or telling him to marry her at once.

66

Please, miss, may I ask a question ?" a village girl said to an Irish lady." Is it true that a lady must wait till a gentleman asks her to marry him? My ma takes the Young Ladies' Journal, and we read about a lady there that was waiting for the young man to speak out."

"Quite true," said the lady.

"Oh, dear! but that is a great hardship. If a body waited and waited for them to speak, a girl would never get the boy she wanted. I would not like to be a lady at all. Doesn't your sort keep company, ma'am? "

"Oh, yes," the lady said, much amused; "but still the lady must wait till the gentleman speaks."

"That is a poor way of doin'," said the girl; "and for all the quality is so larned, they have no better way nor that. If I saw a nice man, and I set my heart on him, I would get some one to ask him to court, I would; but I never knew before what made so many old maids among the quality. Waitin' for the men to speak!" she exclaimed, moving off; "musha, but the ways of the quality is quare."

Still, the path of the Irish lovers is often choked with difficulties. On one occasion the wooing and winning had satisfactorily progressed, a house had been found, which in the country is not always to be had, and a happy termination of the company-keeping was looked forward to by the lovers. But one morning news arrived that the young man's mother had " forbidden the banns." "Willie was 'ower young to marry,' and by-and-by she would look out some neighbour girl for him, with maybe a fortune." The brideelect was a young woman of spirit. She went to her Sunday-school teacher and told her story.

"If you would help me, ma'am," she said, "I would soon bring her round. It is nothing but crankiness. She's just as cross as two sticks laid across two sticks, and that's what she is. If you would give me a bundle of patches, black bits and white bits, and lend me your big scissors-I'll take good care and bring them back safely and a big black spool (i.e., reel of cotton) and a big white one, a coarse needle, and a darning one, I'll just set off to-morrow morning, and go and see her; and I'll not leave a dud (i.e., article of clothing) in the house, that I won't mend, till she sees the illigant patcher that I am, and she'll just have to hould her tongue."

It is needless to say that the request was granted; a bundle of scraps of cloth and calico was made up, and the next morning the bride-elect set out at break of day, with her Sunday dress put on a-top of her working one-a favourite mode of carrying a girl's wardrobe in Ireland-her bundle of patches under her arm, her shoes in her hand-for economy's sake-and took the mother-in-law elect by storm. What was a ten miles' trudge compared to the importance of the issue? She remained for a fortnight, and returned triumphant, having subdued the objections of the cross old woman.

"And there's your scissors, ma'am, and the needles, and thank you kindly. I kept them in the thatch for fear of anything happening to them. I was feared of my life they would get lost."

To this girl it would have been quite incomprehensible the etiquette that would require a young lady to wait for an invitation. from the mother-in-law elect, before she bearded the lioness in her den. It would be quite as bad as to have to wait for the young man to "speak out."

But then, Ireland is such a very queer country.

BONNIVARD.

His name is as irrevocably a watchword of freedom as that of William Tell or Hofer; but in what manner he became thus identified, few persons seem to know. The writer certainly never knew, even when those musical lines sounded sweetest about the "sad floor of Chillon," which was trod—

"Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard !"

In some respects his life is worth noting and remembering. That track of the footprints gave origin to one of the noblest of Lord

Byron's poems, and is a curious instance of the seed of truth in a bushel of fiction; for Bonnivard's brothers never shared his imprisonment, consequently the touching incidents recorded are purely imaginary.

Francis de Bonnivard was born of a noble family in the small town of Seyssel, in the French district of Buge, about the year 1496. He was educated at the University of Turin, where he was not remarkable for sedateness; his natural temperament was exceedingly lively and buoyant, which served him in good stead during the troublous times he had to tide over. He is said to have been "a brilliant young man, sparkling with wit, and full of Livy, Cicero, and Virgil "—the sort of character one would expect to be more of a boon companion than of a hero. But he had too much intellect to sink into the former capacity; he was clever and caustic in no ordinary degree, and the circumstances of his time made him exercise his ability and satire against tyranny and tyrants.

Just outside the walls of the city of Geneva was the priory of St. Victor, whose abbot was a sovereign prince over a state of diminutive dimensions; and in the year 1514 this abbot happened to be Bonnivard's uncle. He was on his deathbed in December of that year, and told his nephew of one sin which was weighing espe cially heavy on his conscience. Once when he had a feud with a neighbouring baron, he had sacrilegiously applied the church funds at his disposal to the casting of four large culverins-long, slender pieces of ordnance, whose specialty was to carry a ball to a great distance that he might besiege the offending seignior. Now he wanted to make amends for that belligerent action, and desired that his nephew (and heir) would have the culverins recast into a peal of bells for the church. But after the old prior's decease, when Bonnivard told of his request to a certain influential Genevese citizen named Berthelier, the latter scouted the idea. "We will give you enough metal to make a peal that shall ring sufficient to stun you; but the culverins ought to remain culverins." The farseeing citizen, imbued with the love of liberty, scented gunpowder already in the pacific air. The Council of Geneva voted the bells to the prior of St. Victor, and kept the ordnance intact.

The Duke of Savoy, feudal lord, claimed the guns as soon as he heard of this transaction; but the people would not give them up. They were jealous of the Duke, who, on his part, hated their independence. He had been long forming plans for getting Geneva into his own hands, and quenching its self-government. In 1515, on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter to Julian de Medici, he procured a bull from Pope Leo X., who was elated at the match -a bull transferring the temporal authority in Geneva to the Duke of Savoy, as sovereign prince.