prepared to recognize and appreciate the traits and characteristics of the different generations of clerics in the Irish Church. Sometimes, perhaps, through the vanity that clings to us all to the end, I play the part of "laudator temporis acti," and then the young fellows shout:-- "Ah, but, Father Dan, they were giants in those days." And the tags and shreds of poor human nature wave in the wind of flattery; and I feel grateful for the modest appreciation of a generation that has no sympathy with our own. Then, down there, below the water-line of gray heads is the coming generation of Irish priests, who, like the [Greek: lampadêphoroi] of old in the Athenian games, will take the torch of faith from our hands and carry it to the Acropolis of Heaven,--clean-cut, small of stature, keen-faced, bicycle-riding, coffee-drinking, encyclopædic young fellows, who will give a good account of themselves, I think, in the battles of the near future. It is highly amusing to a disinterested spectator, like myself, to watch the tolerant contempt with which the older generation regards the younger. They have as much contempt for coffee as for ceremonies, and I think their mistakes in the latter would form a handsome volume of _errata_, or add another appendix to our valuable compendiums. To ask one of these old men to pass a cup of coffee is equivalent to asking a Hebrew of the strict observance to carve a ham, or a Hindoo to eat from the same dish with a Christian. And many other objects that the passing generation held in high esteem are "gods of the Gentiles" to the younger. They laugh profanely at that aureole of distinction that used hang around the heads of successful students, declaring that a man's education only commences when he leaves college, and that his academical training was but the sword exercise of the gymnasium; and they speak dreadful things about evolution and modern interpretation, and the new methods of hermeneutics, and polychrome Bibles; and they laugh at the idea of the world's creation in six days; and altogether, they disturb and disquiet the dreams of the staid and stately veterans of the Famine years, and make them forecast a dismal future for Ireland when German metaphysics and coffee will first impair, and then destroy, the sacred traditions of Irish faith. And yet, these young priests inherit the best elements of the grand inheritance that has come down to them. Their passionate devotion to their faith is only rivalled by their passionate devotion to the Motherland. Every one of them belongs to that great world-wide organization of Priests Adorers, which, cradled in the dying years of our century, will grow to a gigantic stature in the next; for at last it has dawned upon the world that around this sacred doctrine and devotion, as around an oriflamme, the great battles of the twentieth century will rage. And they have as tender and passionate a love for the solitary isle in the wintry western