have but a minor influence on the popular sensibili ties. The time may come when, by the bungling measures of a Whig administration, brought to their. full maturity of mischief by the studied neglect of the agricultural and shipping interests, the general disorganisation of the state-machinery at home, and the natural results of their intermeddling abroad, a dearth of the primary articles of domestic consump¬ tion may bring to the Englishman's fireside the broad conviction of a misrule and mismanagement too long. and too sluggishly endured. It may then be too late to apply remedial measures with efficacy; and the only resource left may be, like Caleb Balderstone in the Waverley Novels, or like Spencer Perceval in the House of Commons, to proclaim "a general fast." When that emergency shall arise, the quaint and original, but sometimes luminous and philosophic, views of Father Prout on the fast of Lent may afford much matter for speculation to the British public; or, as Childe Harold says, "Much that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly.” Before we bring forward Father Prout's lucubrations on this grave subject, it may be allowable, by way of preliminary observation, to remark, that, as far as Lent is concerned, as well indeed as in all other matters, "they manage these things differently abroad." In foreign countries a carnival is the ap propriate prelude to abstemiousness; and folks get such a surfeit of amusement during the saturnalian days which precede its observance, that they find a grateful repose in the sedate quietude that ensues. The custom is a point of national taste, which I leave to its own merits; but whoever has resided on the Continent must have observed that all this bacchanalian riot suddenly terminates on Shrove Tuesday; the fun and frolic expire with the "boeuf-gras ;" and the shouts of the revellers, so boisterous and incessant during the preceding week, on Ash Wednesday are heard no more. A singular ceremony in all the churches that of sprinkling over the congregation on that Wednesday the pulverised embers of the boughs of an evergreen (meant, I suppose, as an emblem and record of man's mortality)-appears to have the instantaneous effect of turning their thoughts into a different channel: the busy hum subsides at once; and learned commentators have found, in the fourth book of Virgil's Georgics, a prophetic allusion to this magic operation : - "Hi motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta The non-consumption of butchers' meat, and the substitution, almost universal, of fish diet, is also a prominent feature in the continental form of observing Lent; and on this topic Father Prout has been re no more -- markably discursive, as will be seen on perusal of the following pages. To explain how I became the depository of the reverend man's notions, and why he did not publish them in his lifetime (for, alas! he is peace be to his ashes!) is a duty which I owe the reader, and from which I am far from shrinking. I admit that some apology is required for conveying the lucid and clarified ideas of a great and good divine through the opaque and profane medium that is now employed to bring them under the public eye; and I account for it accordingly. I am a younger son. I belong to an ancient, but poor and dilapidated, house, of which the patrimonial estate was barely enough for my elder; hence, as my share resembled what is scientifically called an evanescent quantity, I was directed to apply to that noble refuge of unprovided genius-the bar! To the bar, with a heavy heart and an aching head, I devoted year after year, and became, or was about to become, a tolerable proficient in the black letter, when an epistle from Ireland reached me in Furnival's Inn, and altered my prospects materially. This despatch was from an old Roman Catholic aunt whom I had in that country, and whose house I had been sent to when a child, on the speculation that this visit to my venerable relative, who to her other good qualities added that of being a resolute spinster, might determine her, as she was both rich and capricious, to on make me her inheritor. The letter urged my immediate presence in the dying chamber of the Lady Cresswell; and, as no time was to be lost, I contrived to reach in two days the lonely and desolate mansion Watergrasshill, in the vicinity of Cork. As I 'entered the apartment, by the scanty light of the lamp that glimmered dimly, I recognised, with some difficulty, the emaciated form of my gaunt and withered kinswoman, over whose features, originally thin and wan, the pallid hue of approaching death thin a cast an additional ghastliness. By the bedside stood the rueful and unearthly form of Father Prout; and while the sort of chiaroscuro in which his figure appeared, half shrouded, half revealed, served to impress a proper awe for his solemn functions, the scene itself, and the probable consequences to me of this last interview with my aunt, affected me exceedingly. I involuntarily knelt; and while I felt my hands grasped by the long, cold, and bony fingers of the dying, my whole frame thrilled; and her words, the last she spoke in this world, fell on my ears with all the effect of a potent witchery, never to be forgotten!" Frank," said the Lady Cresswell, "my lands and perishable riches I have bequeathed to you, though you hold not the creed of which this is a minister, and I die a worthless but steadfast votary : only promise me and this holy man that, in memory of one to whom your welfare is dear, you will keep me with a propert 2.29110 て the fast of Lent while you live; and, as I cannot control your inward belief, be at least in this respect a Roman Catholic: I ask no more." How could I have refused so simple an injunction? and what junior member of the bar would not hold a good rental by so easy a tenure? In brief, I was pledged in that solemn hour to Father Prout, and to my kind and simple-hearted aunt, whose grave is in Rathcooney, and whose soul is in heaven. During my short stay at Watergrasshill (a wild and romantic district, of which every brake and fell, every bog and quagmire, is well known to Crofton Croker for it is the very Arcadia of his fictions), I formed an intimacy with this Father Andrew Prout, the pastor of the upland, and a man celebrated in the south of Ireland. He was one of that race of priests now unfortunately extinct, or very nearly so, like the old breed of wolf-dogs, in the island: I allude to those of his order who were educated abroad, before the French revolution, and had imbibed, from associating with the polished and high-born clergy of the old Gallican church, a loftier range of thought, and a superior delicacy of sentiment. Maynooth College, one of the many crude emanations of a pseudo-liberality, has sent forth into the rural parishes a class of persons with narrow views and quarrelsome dispositions, fitted only to embitter the already acrid curren of Irish society; and who, disregarding the wishes 900 10 |