From this scene we passed to one, which, though not characterized by its dark, awful beauty, was scarcely inferior to it in effect. It was called the “Prison,” and it is necessary to observe here, that every pilgrim must pass twenty-four hours in this place, kneeling, without food or sleep, although one meal of bread and warm water, and whatever sleep he could get in Petigo with seven in a bed, were his allowance of food and sleep during the twenty-four hours previous. I must here beg the good reader's attention for a moment, with, reference to our penance in the “Prison.” Let us consider how the nature of this pilgrimage: it must be performed on foot, no matter what the distance of residence (allowing for voyages)--the condition of life--the age or the sex of the pilgrim may be. Individuals from France, from America, England, and Scotland, visit it--as voluntary devotees, or to perform an act of penance for some great crime, or perhaps to atone for a bad life in general. It is performed, too, in the dead heat of summer, when labor is slack, and the lower orders have sufficient leisure to undertake it; and, I may add, when travelling on foot is most fatiguing; they arrive, therefore, without a single exception, blown and jaded almost to death. The first thing they do, notwithstanding this, is to commence the fresh rigors of the station, which occupies them several hours. This consists in what I have already described, viz., the pleasant promenade upon the stony spikes around the prison and the “beds;” that over, they take their first and only meal for the day; after which, as in my own case just related, they must huddle themselves in clusters, on what is barefacedly called a bed, but which is nothing more nor less than a beggarman's shakedown, where the smell, the heat, the filth, and above all, the vermin, are intolerable to the very farthest stretch of the superlative degree. As soon as their eyes begin to close here, they are roused by the bell-man, and summoned at the hour of twelve--first washing themselves as aforesaid, in the lake, and then adjourning to the prison which I am about to describe. There is not on earth, with the exception of pagan rites,--and it is melancholy to be compelled to compare any institution of the Christian religion with a Juggernaut,--there is not on earth, I say, a regulation of a religious nature, more barbarous and inhuman than this. It has destroyed thousands since its establishment--has left children without parents, and parents childless. It has made wives widows, and torn from the disconsolate husband the mother of his children; and is itself the monster which St. Patrick is said to have destroyed in the place--a monster, which is a complete and significant allegory of this great and destructive superstition. But what is even worse than death, by stretching the powers of human sufferance until the mind cracks under them, it is said sometimes