If there be few emotions so pleasurable as to be the object of acknowledged gratitude for real services, it may well be doubted whether the consciousness of not having merited this reward does not seriously detract from this enjoyment. There are men, however, so constituted that a successful scheme--no matter how unscrupulously achieved--is always a triumph, and who cherish their self-love even in degradation! Maurice Scanlan is before our reader, and whether he was one of this number it is not for us to say; enough if we record that when he cantered homeward on that day he sang many a snatch of a stray ballad, and none of them were sad ones. CHAPTER XXIX. A SUNDAY MORNING AT CRO' MARTIN Nothing is further from our intention than to enter upon the long-vexed question as to the benefits of an Established Church for Ireland. Wiser heads than ours have discussed it polemically, politically, socially, and arithmetically; and there it is still, left to the judgment of each, as his religion, his party, or his prejudices sway him. There is one view of the subject, however, which no traveller in the country has ever failed to be struck by; which is, that these settlements of Protestantism, dotted through the land, are so many types of an advanced civilization, suggesting, even to those of a different faith, respect and veneration for the decorous observance of this Church, and the calm peace-fulness with which they keep the Sabbath. Priests may denounce and politicians declaim, but the Irish peasant, nurtured with all the prejudices of race and religion, never throws off his veneration for the little flock, who, like a brave garrison in a besieged land, hold manfully together round the banner of their Faith! How striking is this in remote parts of the country, where the reformed religion has made little progress, and its followers are few in number!