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powers. If it be true that with the small minority of educated Catholics his person is separated from his office, and he is not regarded as sacrosanct except in his sacred place, there is unfortunately a counterbalancing fact, a wholly worldly fact, which has given him control of the richer classes in recent times. His order has increased enormously in wealth, and therefore in the power which wealth necessarily confers. He formerly controlled only the poor, now he controls a great number of the rich. And so it results that if any professional man in Ireland incurs ecclesiastical censure, all his Catholic clients are advised to abandon him, and as he can no longer expect to live by the support of Protestants, ruin stares him in the face. Hence the Catholic professional layman, if he does think independently, will not express his opinions in public. I believe that at the first advent of Home Rule this lamentable state of things will rather be aggravated than improved.

But you will say, surely the day of the intellectual resurrection of Ireland must come! It has occurred in Italy, under the shadow of the Vatican; it is occurring in Spain; it must surely also occur in Ireland. Looking at the matter historically, I am sure that this forecast is, in the long-run, correct. But, as I have shown just now, it will be delayed much longer than most people imagine.

The further question remains:

How far will this emancipation, when it comes, tend to the welfare of Ireland? If we consider analogous cases, there is no probability that those who throw off the bondage of the Roman Catholic Church will tolerate the restraints of any creed. They will become, like the mass of Italian men, freethinkers at least till the day of their deathbed, when they will allow the priest to be called in, and will submit in fear and anxiety to his ministrations. For it is wellnigh impossible to eradicate the dread of the future from any mind imbued with the associations of Christian heredity. But for the rest I can only imagine an Irish Legislature, representing an Irish society emancipated from its creed, as no better than that most godless of all assemblies, the Italian Parliament. Any one who has studied the ethics of that Parliament, in particular the conduct of its Government formerly in Erythrea, recently in Tripoli, will know that the introduction of similar freethinking, not only in creed but in ethical problems, will be no great gain to any country. The emancipation from the Roman Catholic creed in Ireland is very likely to bring with it similar consequences. So deeply do I feel the dangers of such a development, that I can well imagine any sincere Protestant patriot deliberately preferring the continued tyranny of the Roman Church to the alternative of a free thinking Ireland.

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These considerations amply

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justify the now classic reply of a Western peasant to a Radical English politician who asked whether he was not longing for Home Rule. "To be sure I am, and so are the whole of us. for all that, I'm thinking Home Rule is very like heaven." "I am very glad to hear you say so; but tell me exactly why.' "Why? Because the whole of us is beggin' and prayin' for it all our lives, but when we come to die and face it close, divil a one of us but would sooner stay as he is." This attitude is by no means singular, as the man rightly expressed it, for the hope of heaven is not at all so strong

in the Irish peasant as the fear of hell. It is not often that the priest dilates upon the future happiness of good men, and when one eloquent curate, within my knowledge, expatiated with godly fervour on the splendours of the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse to an old man dying in misery in a hovel near the village of Ballinamuck (the town of the pig), he only obtained this recognition of his efforts: "Well, yer Reverence, as ye're so intimate with th' Almighty, I wish you'd tell Him from me, that if it's the same to Him, I'd sooner stay in Ballinamuck."

THE LADY OF THE CANARIES.

BY ST JOHN LUCAS.

COMPARATIVE poverty, when one is wandering abroad, often proves a better leader than Murray or Baedeker. Early in the magnificent autumn of 19— I had been walking and climbing in the Ampezzo Dolomites, and found, when I decided to go to Venice for a fortnight, that I had spent far too much money on guides for Cristallo and the Drei Zinnern. The result of this discovery was that instead of sojourning in some huge hotel on the Grand Canal where one's fellow-countrymen abounded, I was driven to seek refuge in a tiny pension on the Zattere, which was dignified with the noble and ancient name of Cà Loredan. I was most fortunate in my necessity: although I had previously visited Venice on many delightful occasions, I felt very soon that this was the first time when I had really lived there. My rooms were sunny and clean, and from the windows I beheld an ever-changing vision of ships, brown-sailed and oddly rigged, with gaily painted hulls; all day long there was a haunting savour of tarry ropes, and also, it must be admitted, an intermittent ancient and fish-like smell; beyond the ships was the Giudecca, rose and pearl in the morning, tawny in the day, and a heaven of gold and brown

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at sunset; to the left I beheld the domes of the Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore, and to the right San Giorgio in Alga and the dusky mainland beyond Fusina. In addition to these delights I soon had the pleasure (for abroad it is a pleasure, whatever it may be in England) of knowing most of my neighbours by sight. They were all picturesque, and the children were charming.

My landlord was a retired gondolier, Zorzio Bresanin-a person who combined the most piratical aspect with a simple and cheerful soul. His wife, Marietta, came from TrevisoTreviso in Italy, she called itand was exceeding stout and a very good cook. Her one defect was a habit of singing out of tune all day long, but the words of her songs were so naïvely amusing that I could easily forgive her. I was the only guest in the little pension; Marietta assured me that she had several English clients, all artists; but the autumn season had scarcely commenced, and the heat, in which I revel, and the mosquitoes, which I despise, had driven the majority of tourists to the sadly vulgarised Lido.

I passed a blissful fortnight of solitude in the Cà Loredan, writing and reading in strict moderation, staring intermin

ably at architecture, idling in gondolas, bathing, and dining with painters at 8 little restaurant in the Rioterrà di Sant' Agnese. Zorzio and Marietta were afraid that I should become depressed and lonely, but their company, with that of Marco and Todaro, their offspring, was entertainment enough for the most gregarious of mortals. Venice, the Bride of the Sea, is also par excellence the Mother of Gossip; in a very short time I seemed to have heard the private history of every one who dwelt on the Zattere, nor were the most intimate affairs of the Giudecca unrevealed. As for my countrymen who live on or near the Grand Canal-I wonder if they have any notion of how the Venetian tongue can wag? I regret to state that I encouraged the Bresanin family to develop this vice of loquacity with all my powers; the stories that they told were commonplace enough, but their method of narration was always fresh, picturesque, and highly comic. The children inherited the failings of their parents; they would talk by the hour of their neighbours, and the candour of their criticisms was often extremely startling. Marco and Todaro, for example, would come to my room on some more or less superfluous errand (not without an eye to the reward -an apricot each for such attentions), and while Marco conversed with me Todaro would observe the gay world from the window. In the middle of our conversation a wild ory would arise from Todaro;

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Marco would beg my pardon and rush to join his brother, and they would both lean out of the window, chattering and gesticulating like a pair of insane monkeys. On my demanding the reason of their excitement the answer would be something to this effect"It is nothing, Signore, only Dario the barcaiuolo making love, as usual, to the wife of Pinelli the seller of pumpkins;" or "Ecco Ecco! the old Lordessa with the golden wig! Who would think that in her youth she was the innamorata of gentlemen innumerable!" On these occasions I would haul them hurriedly back into the room, praying with great fervour that the Lordessa with the golden wig, or whoever else the victim was, might be happily ignorant of the highly expressive Venetian dialect. Once they were removed, however, from their usual environment, Marco and Todaro became living pillars of propriety, and on the occasion when I took them for a trip in a gondola to the Lido, thinking that their comments on the heterogeneous crowd which haunts that famous shore would be amusing, they sat side by side near the bathing-place, which they steadily refused to enter, holding each other's hands, and staring at the motley throng with immense, melancholy eyes, -looking, indeed, so much too good for this vile world that an amusing Frenchwoman of my acquaintance came to demand where I had found the "deux chers petits anges

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d'Andrea del Sarto." If she objectionable manner of my could have heard the criticisms fellow-countrymen at Swiss passed on her by the angels when they returned home she might have felt inclined to modify her impression of them.

With such diversions I led a pleasant life until the end of September, when a change happened. I returned one night from Torcello to find Marietta in a state of garrulous excitement: she had received a telegram from England announcing that a lady of my country was coming to stay at the Cà Loredan, and that she would arrive next evening. I inquired if she were an artist; Marietta did not know, but affirmed that she was not one of her former clients, adding that her name was Farnay, which sounded improbable. I received

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the news with secret distaste; but I had the grace to offer to turn out of the best room, which I was occupying, in favour of the unknown. etta, after protesting volubly for a quarter of an hour that nothing in heaven or on earth would force her to disturb me, agreed to my proposal, and told me where I should live in a way that betrayed how she had all along intended my transplantation. Next day I moved my belongings into a smaller room which adjoined my old one, and found to my joy that I could still obtain access to the balcony. Probably though, I thought, the invading English woman would soon monopolise that point of vantage, and would even use it for airing her garments, in the

The next day was wet, so I passed the greater part of it reading and writing. About six o'clock the rain ceased, and I walked with a friend to the gardens, afterwards dining at a small restaurant on the Schiavoni. When I returned to the Zattere I found that the new client had arrived at Cà Loredan. She was, it appeared, extremely tired, and had gone

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once to her room. Her name was Fane (Farnay was Marietta's Latinisation). I was assured that she was not an artist, but a Lordessa who wore very beautiful clothes and had brought a surprising quantity of trunks and bandboxes. She knew no Italian, and was weary, so weary. When she heard that there was an Englishman staying in the house she had evinced great curiosity as to his name, and had shown symptoms of disappointment when she had learnt it.

It seemed strange that anyone should have advised a lonely Lordessa who knew no Italian to stay at Cà Loredan, where only that language, or rather its Venetian equivalent, was spoken. Zorzio, it is true, professed to be acquainted with English; but his excursions in our tongue were limited to a song which he had learnt in his more active days, -an artless ditty, warbled through the nose, and consisting only of these words

"Gondoliery Drinky-beery"

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