I will not dwell upon the details of this spectacle. Painfully and slowly he bore the remains of the late companion of his misery to the cart. We followed him a little way off and saw him deposit his burden along side of the father of the young woman, and by her assistance. As the two started for the grave-yard to bury their own dead, we pursued our walk still further on, and entered another cabin where we encountered the climax of human misery. Surely thought I, while regarding this new phenomenon of suffering, there can be no lower deep than this between us and the bottom of the grave. On asking after the condition of the inmates, the woman to whom we addressed the question answered by taking out of the straw three breathing skeletons, ranging from two to three feet in height and _entirely naked_. And these human beings were alive! If they had been dead, they could not have been such frightful spectacles, they were alive, and, _mirabile dictu_, they could stand upon their feet and even walk; but it was awful to see them do it. Had their bones been divested of the skin that held them together, and been covered with a veil of thin muslin, they would not have been more visible, especially when one of them clung to the door, while a sister was urging it forward, it assumed an appearance, which can have been seldom paralleled this side of the grave. The effort which it made to cling to the door disclosed every joint in its frame, while the deepest lines of old age furrowed its face. The enduring of ninety years of sorrow seemed to chronicle its record of woe upon the poor child's countenance. I could bear no more; and we returned to Skibbereen, after having been all the afternoon among these abodes of misery. On our way we overtook the cart with the two uncoffined bodies. The man and young woman were all that attended them to the grave. Last year the funeral of either would have called out hundreds of mourners from those hills. But now the husband drove his uncoffined wife to the grave without a tear in his eye, without a word of sorrow. About half way to Skibbereen, Dr. H---- proposed that we should diverge to another road to visit a cabin in which we should find two little girls living alone, with their dead mother, who had lain unburied seven days. He gave an affecting history of this poor woman; and we turned from the road to visit this new scene of desolation; but as it was growing quite dark, and the distance was considerable, we concluded to resume our way back to the village. In fact I had witnessed as much as my heart could bear. In the evening I met several gentlemen at the house of Mr. S----, among whom was Dr. D----. He had just returned from a neighbouring parish, where he visited a cabin which had been deserted by the poor people around, although it was known that some of its inmates were still alive, though dying in the midst of the dead. He knocked at the door; and hearing no voice within,