and his orderly were acquitted accordingly.” This is how simple peasants were treated. As to the priests, they were outlawed, and a price was put upon their heads. The yeomanry, therefore, pursued them with unparalleled energy. One of their most celebrated chiefs publicly said one day: “There are two very amusing hunts--fox-hunting and priest-hunting. But to me the most amusing is priest-hunting.” When they were taken they were put to death with a refined cruelty that would not have discredited Carrier, the butcher of Nantes; for it should be noticed that if we Catholics have the right to speak of such deeds in the terms they deserve, it is a right that French republicans cannot pretend to, although in their newspapers they willingly declaim on the oppression of Ireland. Carrier, a good republican, invented the republican marriages and the _noyades de Nantes_. Lord X---- (I prefer not mentioning his name--it is well known in Paris)--filled his victim’s hat with pitch; it was then pressed down on the head and afterwards torn off, bringing with it the skin and the hair. The Sioux scalp more humanely. In some parts of Ireland this state of things lasted ten or twelve years. During all this time the priests lived like wild beasts, constantly wandering to evade the informers’ researches, living in the midst of the bogs, in absolute dens, from which they only crept out at night to carry religious consolation to the dying, only living on the alms of the miserable people, who had not always a piece of bread for themselves. It required strongly-tempered characters to withstand such a life for a long time. But they found the necessary support in their faith, for not one of them failed. They might have emigrated, but would not, preferring to remain in the midst of their people to the end, and they found their own steadfastness and devotion responded to by a steadfastness and devotion not less worthy of admiration. They had neither bishop nor college. Still the empty places that time produced in the ranks of the clergy were filled up at once; there was never any lack of priests. Those young men who intended to enter the sacerdocy went and completed their studies on the Continent, and then returned after their ordination to fill the place and continue the labours of those who had disappeared. The English often complain that the Irish Catholics display some passionate feeling in making their claims. But they should remember that not more than eighty years have passed since these events took place. It was proposed at Dublin the other day to introduce me to an old lady, nearly a centenarian, who saw Lord X----’s yeomen apply the pitch hat to a priest, her uncle, whom they arrested at the bedside of her dying mother.