CORN-LAW HYMN.-No. II. GOD of the poor! thy foes and ours Sees't thou, oh God! our deadly strife, What, though at times, the sun shines down; Can sun-lit surge, or sun-lit shore, Lord, what avails the transient blue That smiles on storm, and shipwreck, too? Ah! what avails the dying might That struggles still, through gloom and light, If in them both we feel and see The might of fatal prophecy? The sun that shines from deadly skies, No comfort brings to him who dies : A torch may glare on jail or tomb, But chains are chains, and doom is doom. Seest thou the worms that base.y bind, Depend alike, for weal or wo, Oh, give thy toil-redeemer birth! MAYNOOTH. A PENCIL SKETCH. "They came unto Laish, unto a people that were at quiet and secure." WHEN I was a little boy, which, I am sorry to say, is now a great many years ago, I passed much of my time in Maynooth, a village that has since become celebrated by the repeated declarations of those pious men, Captain Gordon, and Lord Roden, that it is the hot-bed of sedition, infidelity, profaneness, villany, and atheism; for there is erected the College, from which issue, in yearly migrations, a fresh flight of Popish priests. To look at Maynooth, no one would suppose it to be the pandemonium which our modern "saints" describe. It is as plain, and as quiet a looking town, as you would wish to pass through. There is but one hotel for the accommodation of the carriage and jaunting-car traveller, and that is kept up by his Grace of Leinster, more "for ornament than use;" for from the time that I played marbles in its flagged hall, to the day I visited it, about five months ago, when there was a splendid Anti-tithe Meeting held in Maynooth market-place, I cannot recollect looking at a regular breakfast-dining-and-sleeping visiter, in the solitary hotel. As to the few public-houses that are found lurking in its lanes, they are as little frequented as the apothecaries' shops. Feasting, dancing, drunkenness, and debauchery, appear to be banished beyond its precincts. Its sober male inhabitants, look, as they pass placidly through the town, as if each of them were going to confession, or were meditating on their penitential prayers. The females seem to be nuns, and walk as demurely along the main street, as those valuable women, "the Sisters of Charity," pass through the crowded thoroughfares of Dublin. The very boys are remarked to be less bold in Maynooth than elsewhere; for if they want to play "prison-bar," or any other noisy game, they must betake themselves to the banks of the canal, which lies behind the town, or bury themselves in the verdant and luxuriant fields which invest it on every side. As to boxing, the puny lads never think of it, unless it be in the old lime-kiln; and even then, it is necessary, if "the cause of quarrel" occurs at school, in order that "the master" may know nothing of it, that your challenge should be written with a cutter on your own slate, sent by your second, and rubbed out by the sponge of your adversary, if he deems it prudent to accept your cartel. Presuming on the aristocracy of my broad cloth, I recollect that, when I was a little boy, I transgressed the regular rules of the town, and challenged Terry Kelly, a hard-grown chap about two years younger then myself, to fight. I was punished for my offence; for the wiry, potato-fed brat, in the course of two rounds, put my nose in "schedule A", and my eyes in "schedule B", by completely disfranchising the one, and permitting me to have with the other, but the return of a single visual member. This was an awful example to all juvenile pugilists, whether they were well-dressed Tories or shoeless Whigs; and never since then, I believe, has the market-place of Maynooth been horrified even by the monomachy of two pugnacious urchins. The little girls in this town appear destitute of all precocious ideas of maternity. You see no waxen dolls with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, cock noses, flax wigs, and protuberant busts, dandled in the arms of infantine misses; not even a papa's pocket-handkerchief, nor a mamma's shawl, is rolled up into the clumsy form of a sucking baby, as you behold them twisted by the imaginative children of the metropolis. All is the strictest propriety; and if you do hear a slight uproar in a house well stocked with "the rising generation," be assured, it is only a mother whipping a young one for making a noise. There are none of the followers of vanity countenanced in the town. Two or three music-grinders made the attempt, and left the place starv. ing, and in despair. The only one I ever heard of making money in Maynooth, was a poor little Italian, who broke his organ in playing "Adeste fideles" for the pious inhabitants. He tried to vary it once or twice by striking up " I'd be a butterfly," and "I've been roaming;" but he got some significant hints, that if he continued such lively tunes, he would have to "fly" out of that, and "roam" elsewhere. As to ropedancers and tumblers, they might caper away "in the air, or on the earth," as they pleased; but no Maynooth man or woman would look at them, much less give them a half-penny. The poor showmen, who live by exhibitions of "battle, murder, and sudden death," seldom think of visiting the curious here. I was myself, when a little fellow, and be. ginning to notice the talk there was about Napoleon's victories, the only one in the entire district who gave a poor man a fi'pennybit," for letting me look five times successively into a narrow deal box, through a dirty bit of magnifying glass at " Alexandria," "London Bridge," " the Battle of the Nile," "the Pyramids of Egypt;" and last and greatest attraction of all, "Giniral Boney-part on his white horse, cutting down 'at one fell swoop,' an entire column of headless opponents." The "poor players" never engage a barn at Maynooth. As to the "Buy-a-broom Girls" those lovely followers, and fellow-countrywomen of "Her most gracious Majesty"-much as their incursions are complained of by Cobbett, into all parts of the empire, he can be assured, that not one of them has had the audacity to shew her short petticoats in Maynooth. If one of them were seen there, the very dogs would bark at her, and, it is not improbable, hunt her out of the town as a non-descript monster, bearing to them neither the appearance of "a man or a fish." 66 The fair day of Maynooth is not like a fair day in any other part of Ireland. The strangers that come in with their cattle seem to be infected with the placability of the inhabitants: a bargain is made, not with shouts, and asseverations, and loud clapping of the hands, and occasionally a knock-down, if " the baste" be too much underrated.-No; every thing is peaceable, orderly, and, in fact, Quaker-like. The price is asked in a low tone-the higgling is carried on in soft sounds, and the sale is completed in a whisper. The ruddy-cheeked lasses of Kildare, and of Meath, buy their prim mob caps, their flashy silk ribbons, and their stout brogues, by signs; and either choose or reject them, as if they were so many automatons, instead of being, as they are, the merry, buoyant, and buxom daughters of "Old Ireland." Then the close of these fairs, which I have witnessed as a boy, was so different from what I have looked at as a man, in Tipperary! How insignificant, and how dull the peaceable termination of a Maynooth fair, to the dash, and the spree, the kick-up, the fighting, and the fury, of a real fair at Thurles ! It would be a gross injustice to that town, which is "the centre of Tipperary," not to mention that it is the only place that preserves, in all its pristine purity, "the old spirit of the country." There are the "pudding-lane boys," and the "high-hill boys;" the "Hickey boys;" and the "Hogan boys;" the "three-year old boys," and the " four-year old boys;" the "white-hen boys," and "the magpie boys," with divi, sions, subdivisions, fractions, and particles of "boys,” that make is a matter of as complete certainty, that you will see a fight in Thurles, as that there is a fair holden in the town. Then there is, when all appears most quiet, a rush from one faction or another-a glorious tattering sweep of the stronger party through the entire street, driving tables, chairs, bed-steads, pannikins, rolls of cloth, bundles of linen,chaney, crockery, gingerbread, toys, boys, girls, old men, and young women, into one inextricable mass of confusion, Then there is the rally of the weaker party —the out-fighting, the in-skrimmaging, the shillelahs going, the stones flying, the alpeens whirling-then the dash of the police, the flashing of bayonets, the smashing of iron, the slating of the peelers, the taking of prisoners, and when the matter becomes serious, a peppering discharge of fire-arms-the cries of the wounded-the clearing of the town by the military-the distant shoutings of "the boys ;" and thus closes a fair at Thurles. How different! how very different, is such a spirit-stirring scene to the dull, the quiet, and the business-doing fair of Maynooth! -but such is one of the evil influences of the Catholic clergy! The College of Maynooth stands at the upper end of that riot-abhorring town. It is a very large, and a very plain-looking edifice, supported upon one side by the old castle of the Geraldines, which still retains, in its dilapidation, traces of the frightful devastation which Oliver Cromwell inflicted on the finest fortresses of Ireland, Upon the opposite side, the College is supported by the temple of worship resorted to by the Protestants of the Church of England. This is an extremely small building, so small, that it might be lost in one of the wings of the Popish college; and presenting, by the contrast, the difference with respect to followers of "the Church as by law established," and " the Church tolerated by the law." There, however, are the two churches, closely united together, holding out an example, which unfortunately is not generally followed, that Protestants and Catholics can, if they choose, be very good neighbours. Taking the three buildings together, they cannot but remind the spectator of the history of Ireland-the castle of the chief, tain, ruined in the vain attempts of its owner to repel the aggressions of the Sassenach; the small, but enormously wealthy Church raised out of the ruins of those who were once the mightiest of the land; and next, that which was the old religion of Ireland overtopping the modern church, and outlasting the earthly strength, and the towering pride of mere mortal man. The gates of Maynooth College are thrown open twice in the week ; thence are seen to issue, at those stated periods, a procession which, to a stranger, would be inexplicable. Black coat after black coat comes forth in an apparently interminable line; the stranger would suppose he was gazing upon a funeral, as he saw the dark files of sable-vested youths pass on before him; he would perhaps look anxiously for the coffin which he might expect to follow their melancholy march. Any Maynooth man would at once tell him he was looking on the future priests of Ireland. Here and there the youthful faces of the lugubrious troop would be dotted with the sage countenance of the important professor, or contrasted by the ruddy and sun-burnt face of a country priest " on a visit." Amongst the students, he would behold many care-worn with thought, and pale from study; while, upon a closer inspection, he would find, in company with the clerical robe, the light joyous countenance, the merry tones, and the hearty laugh that belong to an Irishman. Here he would see the unmitred bishops, the unstoled priests, and the unanointed, but determined curates of Ireland, resolved to enter upon a life, which affords no temptation to avarice, but presents, to those who follow it, the certainty of encountering, in the wretched and deserted wilds of Ireland, famine, pestilence, and death. Such would, or at least, such should be the spectator's thoughts, as he viewed "the priests walking." I remember the first time my grandmother's servant girl, Antey May, saw them; her characteristic exclamation was, "Oh! there they come, the darlings! my blessings on them! there they come swarming out of the college, like a hive of bees with black caps upon their heads!" Many and many is the pleasant day I have passed, when a boy, with those excellent young men. It was then expulsion, and I believe is so still, for a student to be found reading a newspaper. I recollect, as if it were only yesterday, taking a loan out of my grandfather's bed-room of "the Evening Post," which was the Catholic paper at that time, as "the Weekly Register" is now, concealing the precious document in my little blue cap, stealing over to the College to my favourite students, giving them the wink, that I had got "the Post," and then manœuvring with them into the gripe of a ditch, where they sat, and read from the beginning to the end what to them was the news of the day, but which, to all the rest of the world, was a week or a fortnight old. They returned to their rooms delighted, and I betook myself to the confectioner's, where I was able to purchase in cakes double the original price of the old journal. Such was Maynooth College when I was a boy; such is it now. I felt, when gazing on it a short time since, as if all that were in it, and about it, were still the same, and that I alone had changed. It was to me like the acting over in real life of that which had once been a vivid, but had become a nearly-forgotten dream. Even the town itself had not increased in the course of twenty-five years; it seemed as if a census of the inhabitants taken in 1807, would have answered for 1832. This unnatural state of permanency in an Irish population, is only to be accounted for on the principle, that those who do not like a quiet town, have, as they grew up to "the years of discretion," been drafted off to the uneasy parts of Ireland. The same houses that were whitewashed in 1807, were whitewashed last summer; and those that had dirty fronts, and broken panes of glass, when I was a boy, retain the same distinctive marks of filth when I am old enough to record them. In all the place I could see but one change; and I notice it as a solitary instance of the march of improvement. The two-storied house in which I learned my A, B, C, from Mark Usher, has lost its ancient "Professor of the French and English Languages," and is now changed from a modest, plain, chalky-faced academy, into a slatey-blue painted depository of soft goods. The Rattan has given place to the Yard, and the broad-cloths of Yorkshire have superseded "the pot-hooks and hangers" of the writing-master. "Sic transit gloria pedagogi ;" so passes, in an evanescent paragraph, the snuff-box, the ferula, the brown wig, the orthöepy, and the incessant labours of hand and head of poor old Mark Usher. I trust I will be pardoned for this description of an Irish village. My excuse is, in the first place, that a great Captain, a mighty tactician with Bible phrases, and a grand marshaller of Scripture quotations,-even he the Gordon!-has rendered it celebrated by his Parliamentary and |