I never found these persons in the humbler classes, where the unmixed Irish prevails. Hospitality is indeed the polestar of Ireland; go where you will, it is always visible; but it shines the brightest in the poor man's cabin, because the potato that he so frankly, so heartily, so gracefully presses upon your acceptance is selected from a scanty heap, barely sufficient to allay the cravings of hunger in himself and his half-clad little ones. In this, as in all other particulars, a change for the worse has come over the people of late; priestly authority has interposed to check the outgoings of kindness from a warm-hearted people to those who are indeed their friends, and a painful, reluctant restraint is laid upon them; but the evil had not become evident at the time of my sojourn there, and I can only speak of them as the most respectful, most courteous and hospitable peasantry in the world. At the same time they were in many respects the most degraded. Nothing could equal the depth of their abasement before an insolent priesthood, except the unblushing effrontery with which the latter lorded it over them. For any infraction of their arbitrary rules, the most cruel and humiliating penances were imposed. I knew an instance of a young woman, a Romanist, who engaged in the service of a Protestant family, and went out with them to America. While there, she was led to join in family worship, but without any intention of forsaking her own creed; neither had they attempted to draw her out of the net. On her return to Kilkenny she went to confession, and among other things divulged the fact of having heard the Bible read, and prayed in company with heretics. This was an enormity too great for the priest to deal with alone; so he ordered the girl off, fasting, to her original confessor, who then officiated in a chapel seven good Irish miles distant. On hearing the case, he ordered her to go thrice round the chapel on her bare knees, and then to set off, still fasting, and walk back to Kilkenny, there to undergo such additional penance as his reverend brother should see good to impose. The poor creature scarcely reached the town alive, through fatigue, exhaustion, and terror; she was ill for some time, and on her recovery subjected to further discipline. These particulars I had from one of her own friends and a bigoted Papist to boot, who told it in order to convince me that the girl had committed a very great sin.