the romantic shore of Lough Swilly, and at the same time he became domesticated with his granduncle, the aged Pastor of Monaghan. At the knee of that venerable teacher, spoken of as "one of the most accomplished scholars and gentlemen of his time,"* he learned his first lessons. He had for a fellow-pupil, and retained as a life-long friend, Dr. McNally, the present Bishop of Clogher. It is hardly necessary to remind the Irish reader that in these comparatively recent days the houses of Priests and Bishops were the only Diocesan seminaries, their masters the only teachers of postulants for the Priesthood, and the well-worn school-books which had, a century earlier, served the purposes of one generation, survived to supply the wants of a second and a third.

The young Maginn, after seven or eight years with his Monaghan uncle, rejoined his parents in Innishowen, and pursued his studies until his sixteenth year with a Mr. Thomas McColgan of Clonmany, near Buncrana, a graduate of the University of Paris. Fortunate, but not singular in that singular land, was his lot in meeting with such a teacher! In that stormy region where the song-bird gives place the greater part of the year to the sea-bird, and the deep boom of the minute-gun is a frequent sound by night, who would have looked under the thatch of an Innishowen cabin, for a graduate of Paris? Yet so it was. The honored "master" who taught

Letter of Rev. Philip Devlin, of Buncrana.

in that sea-side hut had won many a prize in the halls of the most famous University of Europe. He had labored in the mine of the ancients and in the depths of the sea of science for ten long years, until his eye grew wild and his memory clouded and confused. Subject to occasional fits of insanity, he could not, of course, be admitted to Holy Orders, and as the most suitable second choice, he chose the part of a classical teacher in his na tive regions, where the reverence of the poor was his best protection. In his enthusiasm for learning, which survived every shock and battle of the brain, he might, without much extravagance, have fancied himself another Fintan of Moville, from whom the new Saint Columba, in the person of the docile, eager, spotless youth of Fintona, was to imbibe all human and divine learning.*

At the age of sixteen, our subject left Ireland for Paris, and entered the Irish College, on the maintenance known in that institution as "the Maginn bourse." The College was then presided over by the Rev. Dr. Ryan, who styles himself "Administrator of Irish ecclesiastical establishments in France." Of its faculty were the Abbe Kearney, who, with the better known Abbe Edgeworth, had escorted the unfortunate Louis XVI. to the scaffold, and whose reminiscences of the first revolution, when he

* Mr. McColgan "could reckon among his students almost all the distinguished clergy of Derry and the neighboring dioceses; among hem the late Dr. Montague, President of Maynooth College.-Letter f Rev. P. Devlin, before quoted.

chose to indulge in them, are pronounced by a recent writer to have been most ample and interesting.*

The Irish College at Paris possesses many claims to the affectionate remembrance and respect of all Irishmen. Originally founded with the sanction of the exiled Stuarts, under the auspices of the Bourbons, it was necessarily a very loyal and legitimist institution. It possessed, from the accident of its location, a patriotic as well as a royalist influence. Every Irish soldier in the service of France some time or other came to see its inmates; every Irish tourist, especially if a Catholic and a patriot, was desirous to be introduced to its faculty. In its library were deposited some valuable relics of our Celtic literature, carried abroad in the Jacobite exodus, and destined to be resorted to, after many days, by such zealous students as the Abbe McGeoghegan and the Chevalier O'Gorman. In 1792 it shared the fate of all the ecclesiastical institutions of France-was confiscated and closed; with the consent of the Consuls it was reopened as a secular academy, having the Abbe McDermott for principal, and Eugene Beauharnais and Jerome Buonaparte among its scholars. The studies were wholly unlike those designed for its inmates by the original founders. The practice of religion had not yet "been tolerated." Voltaire and Rouseau were more read than sacred history. On the

"Reminiscences of an Emigrant Milesian," (New York, Appleton & Co., 1855,) p. 247.

restoration of the Bourbons this school was fully restored, and has ever since remained sacred to theological studies. Its importance in that respect, to the insulated church it recruited and sustained in the worst of times, can hardly be exaggerated.

In this College the young Maginn spent seven laborious years. Of the faculty at that time very little is known, except that they were frequently changed. The first class of students was small, but several of them were afterwards distinguished. Dr. O'Higgins, subsequently Bishop of Ardagh, was among the Professors; Archdeacon Hamilton of Dublin, Dean Gaffney of Maynooth, Dr. Kirby, and Dr. Maginn were students. As a scholar, Dr. Maginn was remarkable for ardor and application, frequently sitting up all night to conquer a difficulty. The usual theological treatises he mastered easily, but his curiosity would seem to have led him both in classics and history far beyond the prescribed range of acquirement. In the years 1823, '24 and '25, he received successively from the hands of Monseigneur Louis Hyacinth de Quelen, Archbishop of Paris, tonsure and minor orders; but his health failed him in the last named year, and he was not immediately ordained Priest. From the same cause he declined the earnest invitation of the Bishop of Meaux, to accept a benefice in his diocese.†

* Letter of the Rev. J. McDevitt, of Culdaff. Letter of the Rev. J. McLaughlin, of Derry.

His ill health continuing, he left Paris, in June, 1825, for his native country, bringing with him a highly honorable testimonial, addressed to the Rt. Rev. Peter McLaughlin, of Derry. "His conduct," wrote Dr. Ryan, "has been most exemplary, and his talents conspicuous."

On visiting his uncle, Professor Slevin, at Maynooth, the latter strongly recommended his return to Paris, to contest a chair in his Alma Mater; but the Bishop whose subject he was, took a different view of his duties-raised him to the Priesthood the same year (1825) and appointed him to the curacy of Moville, on the Lough Foyle side of Innishowen.

The barony of Innishowen covers that remarkable peninsula of the north of Ireland, flanked by Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle, and terminating in the lofty double landmark of Dunaff and Malin Head. If Ulster may well be called the most persecuted Province of Ireland, Innishowen may contend for the honor of being the most persecuted portion of Ulster. A natural military base, easily occupied and supplied from the sea, it plays an important part throughout all the religious wars of Ireland. Culmore, on the opposite entrance to the Foyle, Derry, at the head of the harbor, and the several strong castles of Innishowen, were vital points of attack and defence for twenty years of Elizabeth's reign. Its hardy population adhered, through that unequal contest, to the gallant Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, the joint