tery bordering upon it; and the gardens belonging to the castle are the finest.

There are several hospitals in Dublin; the principal, beside those already named, are Kilmainham, Meath Hospital and County Infirmary; the Foundling; Swift's Hospital for lunatics, and Stephen's. There are about 200 charitable institutions for educating the poor, in nearly one-third of which the children are also lodged, boarded, and clothed.

Religious parties in this city seem to be very nearly equally divided, as to numbers. There are some magnificent churches belonging to both Protestants and Catholics, and chapels for all classes of dissenters, some of them very large and handsome structures. But here, as at Limerick, I had a painful evidence of the withering influence of popery, in the license it gives to the desecration of the sabbath. Bands of music, and shouting men and women and boys broke in on the stillness and solemnity of the Lord's day, and few seemed to think it strange, although it was as if Donnybrook had migrated for a season from the south-eastern suburbs of the city into the midst of the crowded streets and lanes, to hold a revelry. Pontifical high mass was to be performed, according to public announcement on huge placards, at the Roman Catholic metropolitan church in Marlborough-street, on the following Thursday, for the benefit of some institution-I think the Propaganda; and a fellow-traveller of mine determined to witness the pageant. Most gorgeous indeed was the whole ceremony, according to his account; the senses were regaled with sweet odours and rich music, and splendid vestments of all colours floated before the dazzled eye. The archbishop preached a very effective discourse on the merit of giving; but alas! when man and man's works are placed in the stead of Christ, or in the front of Christ, so that he appears even only partially hidden, how can it be pleasing to God? When shall the blindness pass away? "Return, O Lord, how long?"

There is a vast amount of poverty in Dublin, and it appears in the most abject form imaginable; beggars are as numerous as vehicles, and may be seen, morning after morning, crowding round the different places of worship belonging to the Catholics, or waylaying passengers by coach or car, and seeking to enlist their sympathies by the tale of their sorrows, and the

exhibition of their suffering ametimes in the most loathsome guise. There is, ana must be, much private benevolence in operation, to reach the misery and poverty of the thousands in this city, who are dependent on charity for a subsistence; but it admits of a question, whether the way in which the evil is met does not tend to increase and perpetuate it. There appears too much readiness, on the part of the able-bodied poor, to depend upon others, instead of making a provision for themselves; and I do not think it can justly be charged as a notion springing from religious bigotry, when I state it as my deep conviction, that the religious system most prevalent in Ireland, and embracing a great majority of the poor in Dublin, is calculated to foster and extend this dependence. It is taught in spiritual things; and it is neither difficult nor unnatural for the ignorant and unreflecting to transfer the principle to temporal things.

The objects of interest around Dublin are many. On the north, in the direction of Drogheda, to which there is a railroad, is Swords, a very ancient place. Its ruins are its only attraction; and these consist of the archiepiscopal palace, which is also a castle, and originally of great strength, standing on the bank of the river that falls at a short distance into the Irish sea; a round tower, in a good state of preservation; and a square steeple of the old church. At St. Doulagh's, a hamlet about five miles from the capital, is a curious stone-roofed church; and near it a sacred well in an octagonal building, and a stone cross. These are all deserving of attention; and from their proximity to Dublin can easily be reached. Leaving this place, the traveller soon reaches the Hill of Howth; which, if it excited interest when viewed at a distance, loses none of it when examined in detail. Here are a castle; the ruins of St. Fintan's church, and of the abbey and college; a druidical altar on the hill of Carrickmoor; and its beautiful lighthouse, on the easternmost part of the rocky peninsula called the Bailey, around which the waves of the ocean are ever breaking into white foam. On the side towards Dublin Bay the cliffs are very high. Towards the north is "Ireland's Eye," a small rocky island, about a mile from Howth, with the remains of a very ancient but small church; and beyond that, Lambay Isle, inhabited by a few fishermen. Leaving Howth, which is

joined to 1 in land by a low narrow Estamus, and skirting the coast, Clontarf is passed, the scene of a desperate battle with the Danes at the commencement of the eleventh century. This place is within a short distance of the city.

Westward of Dublin is the Phoenixpark, in which is the vice-regal lodge, a very unpretending structure. The ground, comprising upwards of 1,700 English acres, is naturally undulating, and has been carefully laid out. Here is a chalybeate spring, that has obtained some celebrity on account of its medicinal qualities. There are two pillars erected in the park; one, the " Wellington Testimonial," certainly not remarkable either for its symmetrical beauty or richness of adornment, and which it is said George Iv. called an "overgrown milestone," is at the entrance. There are gardens in this public demesne belonging to the Zoological Society; a school for the education of the children of soldiers; a powder-magazine and station for artillery, and the Royal Military Infirmary.

Pursuing the course of the Liffey as far as Leixlip, the tourist lights upon a salmon-leap, where the fall of the stream is very beautiful, in the midst of surrounding scenery, calculated greatly to heighten the effect of the picture. Four or five miles further westward is Maynooth, a place whose name has become so well known, where most of the priests of the Roman Catholic church receive their education for the ministry. There are four other colleges belonging to the same community in the south, and one in the west, at Tuam. The college of St. Patrick is a rambling building, without any pretensions to architectural display-something like the system it is designed to extend and perpetuate: a heterogeneous kind of affair, where appearances are not much cared for, provided the end they have in view can be attained. The number of students is between four and five hundred, half of which receive their education and board and lodging gratuitously. This latter class is composed, to a great extent, of the sons of poor farmers and peasants, whose previous life, passed in the lowest grades of society, together with the narrow monastic education they receive in the college, has a most pernicious effect on many of them. There is a low vulgarity of mind about them, which, while it must necessarily repel the more educated and refined members of the Roman

Catholic community, is likely to recommend them to the poorer classes, who form the vast majority of the people of the land; and who, while they revere his office, are glad to find some sympathy with their tastes and habits; and thus are ready to become his tools in any act of bigotry, intolerance, and insubordination. This is not to be understood as characteristic of all the priests of Ireland, or of Maynooth in particular. There are among them men of elegant accomplishments, hard students, and liberal tastes, whose manners are as courteous as those just referred to are coarse; but those, for the most part, are men who have seen more of the world, and have been subjected to its humanizing and refining processes, of which the poor secluded victims of a false system at Maynooth, who scarcely ever leave the place until their final departure to their respective parishes, are altogether ignorant. Although in the library of the college there are works on all subjects in polite literature, yet these are generally sealed books. They are only permitted to read such volumes as the president sanctions for perusal, on pain of expulsion. "The majority of the students,' say the authors of " Ireland," " are not allowed even to enter the room; and those who have the entrée must apply for express leave to read any particular book, explaining for what object they desire to consult it." This restriction was understood to apply to every general history. Mr. Inglis says, "Whoever forms any opinion of the course of education pursued at Maynooth, from what he has read in the report of the educational commissioners, will fall into a grievous error." "I glanced over the shelves," he observes, in another place, "with some attention, and saw no work improper, by its levity or character, for the perusal of a minister of religion; and yet I was informed that a strict watch is kept on the studies of the students; and that it is soon discovered if their studies be improper. Now what is the inference to be naturally drawn from this admission? What are the studies that require so much watching? I saw only the standard histories, and most unexceptionable works of Christian philosophers; from which, then, it necessarily follows, that history, philosophy, and discoverythat all books not strictly theologicalall, in short, by which the mind can be informed and enlarged, are considered to

be improper studies." A contractedness of mind, and an illiberality of sentiment, must be the inevitable result of such a mental discipline, unless the individual subject to it be endowed with extraordinary powers, that by their own native elasticity shall enable him to surmount the obstacles that stand in the way of fostering a generous and humane spirit.

It remains to be seen whether the late increased grant of money made by the government towards this college will have the effect which it was asserted by its advocates would be produced-that of raising the standard of mental excellence, and widening the range of their studies; and so of liberalizing the men who receive its bounty; or whether the effect will be, as others assert, that of only increasing the number of the candidates for the priesthood, while narrowness of mind and sectarian bigotry will continue to be fostered, and the evils of former days, of which complaint was made, and which it was hoped these grants would tend to remedy, be perpetuated and extended on a yet larger scale. Of the latter there seems to be a well-grounded fear. Time will develop the correctness or mistake of this opinion; which many of the most thinking men of all denominations of Christians most firmly maintain.

Returning from Maynooth, in the direction of Dublin, a road strikes off at Lucan, that leads to Clondalkin, where there is a round tower, in an excellent state of preservation, with the ruins of an ecclesiastical building near it. It is about a hundred feet high; and from its proximity to Dublin, as well as its being one of the finest and most perfect in the kingdom, it is an object of great attraction to thousands of visitors yearly.

Having inspected the various objects of interest in and about Dublin, I and a companion set off for a tour through the counties of Wicklow and Wexford. The former is not inappropriately styled the garden of Ireland. Its most exquisitely beautiful scenery, and that which is of a grander and more sublime order, is within a very short distance of the capital; and I cannot conceive it possible to spend a week more delightfully than in wandering among its mountains and glens; by its wild woods and lakes, and along its glorious valleys; or strolling as we did, by moonlight, amid the stilly and startling scenes of desolation which await the traveller amid the ruins of Glendalough. But the impressions

produced by two separate visits to the county of Wicklow, and one to Wexford, must form the subject of another paper. Let the reader just imagine us leaving Dublin by the Bray road, crossing the river Dodder at Donnybrook, the scene of one of Ireland's most celebrated annual revels, though now shorn of many of its most revolting features, and fairly on the road to the glen of the Downs. T. A.

THE PARSIS.

THE following is an extract from a sermon preached by Dr. Wilson, at Bombay, on the baptism of two Pársís youths : It is evident that great multitudes of Zoroastrians continued for several centuries to enter the Christian church, and to vindicate the sincerity of their faith under circumstances of peculiar trial. They forsook the worship of the elements of nature for the service of Him who in the beginning, said, "Let there be light, and there was light," and who "made heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters;" they humbly confessed and deplored their natural depravity, and innumerable actual transgressions, and renounced all confidence in the prevalence, before a holy God, of their unworthy prayers, unmeaning ceremonies, miserable penances, defective repentance, and imperfect obedience; and they put their trust in that Divine Saviour who, after becoming the surety and the substitute of his chosen people, made an atonement for their iniquities by enduring their punishment - who brought in an everlasting righteousness, through which God is just while he justifies the ungodly-and who communicates his Spirit, that the soul may be sanctified, and rendered capable of contemplating the glory, and rejoicing in the grace of God. The fact is delightful to the mind of every true Christian, who hears of the triumphs of the truth in the ages that are past, with a feeling of rapture akin to that with which he observes its progress in his own day; who has his faith assured by the history of God's dealings with his church; and who rejoices in the consideration, that from among the fallen and ruined family of man, there will ultimately be found a redeemed multitude, which no man can number, out of every kindred, and country, and tongue,

and nation. The fact should arouse the attention of the Pársís of the present day, whose forefathers were driven to this land by the infuriated and ungodly zeal of the followers of the false prophet of Mecca; and they should examine the claims of that system of religious faith, which, even when the kingly and priestly power of their nation were in direct hostility to it, secured the credence of, and extended its saving and purifying influence to, thousands and tens of thousands, who in the lands of their fathers were once like themselves, the worshippers of the works of God, instead of the Creator himself. It should mightily encourage the hearts of the beloved youths who on this occasion are enabled to come forward to declare their repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The descendants of the ancient Pársís converts form, no doubt, a large portion of the Armenian, Georgian, Nestorian, and Jacobite Christians, who are now to be found in Persia and the neighbouring countries. There may be instances, even in our day, of these churches being joined by a Zoroastrian in their vicinity, as in the case of the father of a youth from Bushir now present with us in this assembly.* None of the Pársís, how ever, in any part of the world, so far as I am aware, have, till this occasion, entered any of the Protestant churches. Though those of India have had much intercourse with the English, from the first time of their visiting this western coast; and though, upwards of a century and a half ago, Mr. Lord, a pious minister at Surat, endeavoured to excite the sympathies of our countrymen in their behalf,t none of them have as yet publicly professed their attachment to our holy faith. Their continued infidelity, through so long a period, appears wonderful to many who have witnessed their ready adoption of much that is commendable in European manners, and the laudable enterprise,

The young man here referred to, a short time after the baptism of the Pársís youth, from conscientious motives left the communion of the Armen

energy, and industry which they have shown in most of the pursuits of life to which they have devoted themselves; and I dare not, for one moment, attempt to justify it. I am under the necessity of saying, however, that as Christians, we have greatly failed to discharge our duties in reference to their instruction, as well as that of many of the interesting tribes by which we are surrounded. It is only about twenty-four years since the gospel of salvation began to be preached to the natives of this part of India; and a shorter period has passed away since the Scriptures of truth began, even in a limited degree, to be circulated among them, The Hindús, who form the great body of the population, have naturally enough received the chief attention of the few who have devoted themselves to the work of ministering among the heathen. It was not till about eight years ago, when Providence led me to engage in a discussion, which is well known to most of you, that any special efforts were made for the enlightenment of the Pársís of this city; and it was not till the establishment of the General Assembly's institution in 1835, the situation and arrangements of which invited their attention, that their youth were introduced, in any considerable numbers, into any seminaries in which the doctrine of Christ is freely and fully taught. We have much to answer for our neglect of them; and in the interesting circumstances in which we are now assembled, we have great occasion to praise that God who condescends to impart his blessing to the feeblest efforts, and great encouragement to persevere and abound in our work of faith and labour of love.

APPEARANCES OF NATURE.

AUGUST.

fields; for they are white already to har"LIFT up your eyes, and look on the vest," is a charge as applicable to the present season as it was at the period of its utterance. Scenes may now be ob

terian church in Bombay.

See that curious work, "A Discovery of Two Foreign Sects in the East Indies, namely, the Sect of the Banians, the ancient Natives of India, and the Sect of the Persees, the ancient Inhabitants of Persia; together with the Religion and Manners of each Sect. By Henry Lord, sometime resident in the East Indies, and Preacher to the Honourable Company of Merchants trading thither." It is reprinted in Churchill's Collection, vol. vi., and in Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, vol. vii.

intellect and to excite the warmest emotions which the heart can experience. The gladdening sight presented by hill and dale, as the yellow hues of harvest appear, tells of the faithfulness, wisdom, and benevolence of the Almighty.

* See the Oriental Christian Spectator, 1831.

*

Some may be inclined to think this no season of happiness to the toiling peasant, who "from early morn to dewy eve," and perhaps till midnight, is engaged in the labours of the field. But let them not mistake the feelings of those in the humbler walks of life; for oftentimes there is more gratitude experienced by the rough peasantry of our land, than by any of their wealthy masters. Those who have mixed with them, and have heard their expressed feelings, have frequently testified to this fact; and were "the simple annals of the poor" of Britain more examined, their sense of enjoyment, their disposition to acknowledge benefits, and their capacity for improvement, would be better appreciated. The extreme beauty of nature does not fail now to elicit the admiration even of the superficial. The monotony which would be presented if nothing but corn appeared is averted by the patches of bean-land, by occasional strips of newly-ploughed land, where the rye lately stood, and also by the green meadows traversed by cattle, and the rich foliage of the trees. These now appear sprinkled with what at first seem like gleams of scattered sunshine among the leaves, but which, on examination, is found to be the new foliage that has been put forth since midsummer, and which yet retains all the brilliant green of the spring. The effect of the new leaves, as they lie in sweeps and patches on the old, though not generally observed, is one of the most beautiful and interesting characteristics of the seaIn many cases, when a near sight of it is suddenly obtained, on the sides of thick plantations, the effect is perfectly deceptive; and the mind is filled with surprise and admiration.

son.

The hop-harvest now occupies the attention of the people in the neighbourhood of the plantations, and of multitudes who flock thither; for thousands have been anticipating the gathering for some time past. The cultivation of the hop supplies a variety of employments for men, women, and children. During the

* The details of "Harvesting" will not here be given, as an opportunity of doing so has recently

been taken. See "Autumnal Scenes" in the Visitor for September, 1846.

midal stacks, having just sufficient space between them to allow of a free circulation of air, and as spring advanced they were taken down and prepared for service. The opening of the hills" succeeded; a hole was made two feet in depth and breadth, that the earth might be sufficiently loosed; but if it had been préviously well trenched this would be unbeen raised in beds, the young shoots necessary. The young plants having which rise from the roots of old plants they strike, when they are cut off and are more commonly laid in the earth till planted in the nursery bed. Into each of the holes three nursery plants are put; and the mould having been freely worked with a spade is thrown gently in around the roots, which are to be carefully spread out, and the plants raised up above the natural level of the ground, so that a hill may be hereafter formed about them.

In the early spring of the second year, when the season is favourable, the "hills" then pruned. The old shoots being cut off are opened, and the last year's shoots are clean and smooth, within an inch or two of the main stem, and the suckers close to it, the soil is replaced sufficiently to cover the wounds.

As the genial influence of spring affects the plant, its shoots appear above the ground; and about April a pole is inserted in the ground for the support of the growing bine. The hop-plants are then fastened to the pole; and when the hops reach the tops of the poles, the bines that may have been blown from their proper positions are replaced, the occukind of ladder that is used. As the plants pation being called "horsing," from a grow to maturity, the proprietor makes his arrangements for the hop-picking; and on their attaining perfection, the poles are taken down, and the stems cut three feet from the ground. They are now laid in a sloping direction over a strong wooden frame, supported on legs, and called a crib or bin, while a bag formed of coarse cloth is attached to this frame by hooks. Two or three poles being thus placed, three or four pickers are arranged on each side of the bin; and when the cloth is full, the hops are

emptied into a large sack, which is carried home, and the hops laid on the kiln to be dried. This process having been completed, a sack is let down a hole in the stowing-room, and a man gets through to distribute and trample the hops, which