This sermon was delivered by a little old mendicant, in the Irish language. Beside him stood the parish priest in pontifiealibus, and with as much self-invested dignity as the _dalai lama_ of Little Thibet could assume before his votarists. When the shrivelled little mendicant had harangued them some time on the subject of Christian charity, for so his countenance and action indicated, a general _secula seculorum_ concluded his discourse; and while he meekly retreated a few paces, the priest mounted the steps of the little altar; and after preparing his lungs, he delivered an oration, to which it would be impossible to do any justice. It was partly in Irish, partly in English; and intended to inculcate the necessity of contributing to the relief of the mendicant preacher, if they hoped to have the benefit of his prayers; addressing each of his flock by their name and profession, and exposing their faults and extolling their virtues, according to the nature of their contributions While the friar, who stood with his face to the wall, was with all human diligence piously turning his beads to two accounts--with one half he was making intercession for the souls of his good subscribers, and with the other diligently keeping count of the sum total of their benefactions. As soon as I had sent in mine, almost stifled with heat, I effected my escape. In contrasting this parish priest with the chaplain of Inismore, I could not help exclaiming with Epaminondas--“It is the _man_ who must give dignity to the situation--not the situation to the man.” Adieu. H. M. LETTER XVIII. TO J. D. ESQ., M. P. “La solitude est certainement une belle chose, mais il-y-a plaisir d’avoir quelqu’une qui en sache repondre, a qui on puis dire, la solitude est une belle chose.” So says Monsieur de Balsac, and so repeats my heart a thousand times a day. In short, I am devoured by _ennui_, by apathy, by discontent! What should I do here? Nothing. I have spent but four days here, and all the symptoms of my old disease begin to re-appear: in short, like other impatient invalids, I believed my cure was effected when my disease was only on the decline. I must again fly to sip from the fountain of intellectual health at Inismore, and receive the vivifying drops from the hand of the presiding priestess, or stay here, and fall into an incurable atrophy of the heart and mind!