ment either to you or to any parent who may withdraw his son. A circumstance has happened which, though it cannot impair the utility of my school, and ought not to injure its character, may still be held as giving offence to certain persons. I will not be driven to alter my conduct by what I believe to be foolish misconception on their part. But they have a right to their own opinions, and I will not mulet them because of their conscientious convictions. Yours faithfully, "JEFFREY WORTLE." written not many days before to Mary Wortle, who had on one occasion been staying with her, she said that she was at that time in the same house with the Bishop and Mrs. Rolland. Of course the Doctor knew again how to put two and two together. Then there came a letter from Mr. Talbot "DEAR WORTLE, So you are boiling for yourself another pot of hot water. I never saw such a fellow as you are for troubles! Old Mother Shipton has been writing such a letter to our old woman, and explaining that no boy's soul would any longer be worth looking after if he be left in your hands. Don't you go and get me into a scrape more than you can help; but you may be quite sure of this, that if I had as many sons as Priam I should send them all to you;— only I think that the cheques would be very long in coming.Yours always, JOHN TALBOT." The Doctor answered this at greater length than he had done in writing to Mr. Momson, who was not specially his friend. "MY DEAR TALBOT,-You may be quite sure that I shall not repeat to any one what you have told me of Mother Shipton. I knew, however, pretty well what she was doing, and what I had to expect from her. It is astonishing to me that such a woman should still have the power of persuading any one, astonishing, also, that any human being should continue to hate as she hates me. She has often tried to do me an injury, but she has never succeeded yet. At any rate she will not bend me. Though my school should be broken up to-morrow, which I do not think probable, I should still have enough to live upon, - which is more, by all accounts, than her unfortunate husband can say for himself. "The facts are these. More than twelve months ago I got an assistant named Peacocke, a clergyman, an Oxford man, and formerly a Fellow of Trinity;-a man quite superior to anything I have a right to expect in my school. He had gone as a classical professor to a college in the United States;-a rash thing to do, no doubt;-and had there married a widow, which was rasher still. The lady came here with him and undertook the charge of the schoolhouse, with a separate salary; and an adınirable person in the place she was. Then it turned out, as no doubt you have heard, that her former husband was alive when they were married. They ought probably to have separated, but they didn't. They came here instead, and here they were followed by the brother of the husband,-who, I take it, is now dead, though of that we know nothing certain. "That he should have told me his position is more than any man has a right to expect from another. Fortune had been most unkind to him, and for her sake he was bound to do the best that he could with himself. I cannot bring myself to be angry with him, though I cannot defend him by strict laws of right and wrong. I have advised him to go back to America and find out if the man be in truth dead. If so, let him come back and marry the woman again before all the world. I shall be ready to marry them, and to ask him and her to my house afterwards. "In the meantime what was to become of her? Let her go into lodgings,' said the Bishop. Go to lodgings at Broughton! You know what sort of lodgings she would get there among psalm - singing green-grocers who would tell her of her misfortune every day of her life! I would not subject her to the misery of going and seeking for a home. I told him, when I persuaded him to go, that she should have the rooms they were then occupying while he was away. In setthing this, of course, I had to make arrangements for doing in our own establishment the work which had lately fallen to her share. I mention this for the sake of explaining that she has got nothing to do with the school. No doubt the boys are under the same roof with her. Will your boy's morals be the worse? It seems that Gustavus Momson's will. You know the father; do you not? I wonder whether anything will ever affect his morals? "Now I have told you everything. Not that I have doubted you; but, as you have been told so much, I have thought it well that you should have the whole story from myself. What effect it may have upon the school I do not know. The only boy of whose secession I have yet heard is young Momson. But probably there will be others. Four new boys were to have come, but I have already heard from the father of one that he has changed his mind. I think I can trace an acquaintance between him and Mother Shipton. If the body of the school should leave me I will let you know at once, as you might not like to leave your boy under such circumstances. "You may be sure of this, that here the lady remains until her husband returns. I am not going to be turned from my purpose at this time of day by anything that Mother Shipton may say or do. "Yours always, "JEFFREY WORTLE." IRISH DISTRESS AND ITS ORIGIN. EDMUND SPENSER, describing the state of Ireland three hundred years ago, says: "There have been divers good plots devised and wise counsels cast already about the reformation of that realm; but they say it is the fatal destiny of that land that no purposes whatsoever are meant for her good, will prosper, or take good effect, which, whether it proceed from the very Genius of the soil, or influence of the stars, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time for her reformation, or that He reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some secret scourge, which shall by her come unto England, it is hard to be known, but yet much to be feared." The description of Ireland given by Spenser has held good down to the present day. That country has been a rankling thorn in the flesh of every British Government, and the lapse of time shows no sign of amendment. Within the last thirty years there have been some short intervals of comparative prosperity, but these have been varied by periods of turmoil and agitation; and even in the most prosperous times there has been a constant risk of distress in the poorer districts of the country, from failures of crops, especially of the potato. Much of this state of matters is due to the low social condition of the bulk of the Irish people, and so long as it remains in that state amelioration is hopeless. For ages the people have depended for subsistence chiefly upon the potato, and notwithstanding the many warnings they have had of the folly of so doing, they have not abated their confidence in a crop which has repeatedly failed, leaving them helpless. The potato crop failed in 1823, in 1837, in 1840; 66 and then we come to the great failure of 1846 and 1847, when, according to the late Earl Russell, a famine of the thirteenth fell upon the population of the nineteenth century." The efforts which were made at that time by public and private beneficence to relieve the distress were unparalleled for their magnitude. Parliament voted over seven millions sterling for public works, labour rates, and temporary relief; but this assistance is now ignored, and even occasionally denied, by the Home Rule organs and orators of the present day, although it is a historical fact. In 1850 the country began to improve, and in many respects it materially advanced in prosperity until 1860, when three consecutive wet seasons set in, terminating in 1863, which entailed much loss to all classes of farmers, and considerable privations in the case of the peasant landholders and labourers. It has been calculated that the loss on live-stock alone during the years named amounted to over five millions sterling, even at the low scale of prices used at that time by the Registrar-General. The crops of all kinds were deficient; potatoes were small in size, and much affected by disease; a large proportion of the hay crop was unfit for use; and what added much to the privations endured by the people, was a fuel famine, the wet weather rendering it impossible to have a supply of turf. Many landlords made abatements of rents, varying from 15 to 30 per cent; and in various instances they also imported coals, which they either sold at a low price to their tenants, or gave as a free gift. The results of the wet summer and early part of the autumn of 1879 were simply a repetition of those which occurred from 1860 to 1863, with this difference, that the crops of 1879 were ultimately saved in tolerably fair condition, owing to the continuance of remarkably fine weather for several weeks during the months of October and November. It is not denied that the crops of 1879 were below an average in point of yield; but it was subsequently proved that the loss was not so great as the hastily collected statistics, published last winter by the Registrar - General, appeared to show. The unfavourable weather of last year has been followed by results differing from those which attended any previous failure of the crops in Ireland. It has been made the groundwork of a political and social agitation of the worst kind. The Irish peasantry, especially in the west and south-west, were in a much worse plight in 1861 and 1862 than they have been in during the last six months; but their condition at that time caused no excitement, and, we may even say, that very little sympathy existed amongst those who were not directly affected by the unfortunate condition of the people. But eighteen years ago there was no one to make the misfortunes of the people a stalkinghorse for the advancement of political and seditious projects. Mr. Parnell was at that time a schoolboy, and Home Rule had not become even a dream of any of those visionary schemers who delight in posing before the public gaze as Irish patriots. In the interval, Mr. Parnell came to the front as the political leader of a party professing intense hatred to the British Government and the maintenance of the Union, and resolved, also, to overturn all existing laws affecting the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland.. Meetings were got up last year in those parts of the country where the people were supposed to be in favour of such views, and principles verging upon extreme Communism were broadly advocated by Mr. Parnell and his supporters, lay and clerical. That gentleman could thank God for the torrents of rain which fell at the time when several of those meetings were held, beating the crops into the ground, and destroying the hopes of the farmers; and these calamities were blasphemously asserted by Mr. Parnell to afford proof that Heaven was fighting on their side. His constant advice to farmers was, Pay no rent, but keep a firm grip of the land, no matter what the law might say or do to the contrary. This advice was very palatable to the bulk of his hearers; and the result is, that certain parts of the west of Ireland, particularly the counties of Mayo and Galway, have been the scenes of wild outrages, and even of murders. Men who paid their rents. have been taken out of their huts at night and roasted over a fire, or "carded" until their bodies were rendered a mass of red flesh. In other instances cattle and horses have been hamstrung, and sheep driven into the sea. In short, the people of Connaught have shown that they are still the " savage nation" depicted by the poet Spenser. But what could be expected from poor, ignorant, excitable people, when an Irish M.P.-Mr. Biggarhad the audacity to attempt to excuse in the House of Commons the assassination of Irish landlords! The anti-rent agitation has also spread to other parts where the people have usually been peaceable and orderly. On the 13th of July, Mr. Justice Lawson, addressing the grand jury of the county of Kerry, said "I am sorry to see that the picture presented, especially at the north end of the county, is that of a determined and organised opposition to the payment of rent, and to the carrying out of the process of the law, which state of things, if allowed to go on unchecked, must lead, I should say, to the breaking up of all the bonds of civilised society." The agitators resolved to make capital of any distress which might exist in the west, from the failure of crops or other causes. With this view a 66 Special Commissioner" was despatched from the office of the Dublin Freeman's Journal,' and the nature of his instructions soon became manifest from the highly sensational style of his reports. Reporters from other journals, metropolitan as well as Irish, followed in the steps of the 'Freeman's' correspondent; and although their reports were couched in much more moderate terms, still it was evident that the writers were much impressed by the miserable condition of the people. No surprise need be felt that such was the case. Gentlemen accustomed to the comforts, conveniences, and decencies of civilised life, suddenly found themselves transported into a district where such things were utterly unknown. There could not be a greater difference between life in London as compared with life in Zululand, than between the Londoners and the Connaughtmen. The parties were at opposite poles of the social scale. But the people of Connaught had not temporarily sunk into the abject condition in which the reporters found them. It was their normal state, temporarily affected, no doubt, by temporary causes, but still the state in which they had been born and reared. The cabin or hut of a Connaughtman has from time immemorial been one of the most "The state of the lower orders in Ireland is such, that it is astonishing to me how they preserve health, and, above all, how they retain cheerfulness under the total privation of anything like comfort, and the existence of a state of things that the inferior animals would scarcely endure, and which they do not endure in this country [England]. Their houses are not even called houses, and they ought They are built of mud, and partly with not to be; they are called cabins. thatch, and partly with a surface which they call scraws, but which is utterly insufficient to keep out the rain. In these abodes there is nothing that can be called furniture; it is a luxury to have a box to put anything into; it is a luxury to have what they call a dresser for laying a plate upon. They generally have little beyond a castmetal pot, a milk-tub, which they call e keeler, over which they put a wicker basket, in order to throw the potatoes, water and all, into the basket, that the water should run into their keeler. [The seats are usually large stones, or stones.] The entire family sleep in the short pieces of wood resting upon same apartment [and occasionally more than one family, they call it a room: they have seldom any bedsteads; and as to coverings for their beds, they have nothing but straw, and very few blankets. In general, they sleep in their clothes; there is not one in ten try, and sometimes a cow or calf or who has a blanket. [Pigs and poulgoat, rest at night in the same apartment with the family.] Their diet is equally wretched. It consists, except on the sea-coast, of potatoes and water during the greater part of the year, and of potatoes and sourmilk during the remainder." Since O'Connell's time, many landed proprietors have done much to improve the cabins on their estates, and in various instances |