H. M.
LETTER XV.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
M———— House.
It certainly requires less nicety of perception to distinguish differences in kind than differences in degree; but though my present, like my past situation, is solitudinous in the extreme, it demands no very great discernment to discover that my late life was a life of solitude—my present, of desolation.
In the castle of Inismore I was estranged from the world: here I am estranged from myself. Yet so much more sequestered did that sweet interesting spot appear to me, that I felt, on arriving at this vast and solitary place (after having passed by a few gentlemen’s seats, and caught a distant view of the little town of Bally——,) as though I were returning to the world—but felt as if that world had no longer any attraction for me.
What a dream was the last three weeks of my life! But it was a dream from which I wished not to be awakened. It seemed to me as if I had lived in an age of primeval virtue. My senses at rest, my passions soothed to philosophic repose, my prejudices vanquished, all the powers of my mind gently breathed into motion, yet calm and unagitated—all the faculties of my taste called into exertion, yet unsated even by boundless gratification.—My fancy restored to its pristine warmth, my heart to its native sensibility. The past given to oblivion, the future unanticipated, and the present enjoyed with the full consciousness of its pleasurable existence. Wearied, exhausted, satiated by a boundless indulgence of hackneyed pleasures, hackneyed occupations, hackneyed pursuits, at a moment when I was sinking beneath the lethargic influence of apathy, or hovering on the brink of despair, a new light broke upon my clouded mind, and discovered to my inquiring heart, something yet worth living for. What that mystic something is, I can scarcely yet define myself; but a magic spell now irresistibly binds me to that life which but lately,
“Like a foul and ugly witch, did limp
So tediously away.”
The reserved tints of a gray dawn had not yet received the illuminating beams of the east, when I departed from the castle of Inismore. None of the family were risen, but the hind who prepared my rosinante, and the nurse, who made my breakfast.
I rode twice round that wing of the castle where Glorvina sleeps: the curtain of her bedroom casement was closely drawn: but as I passed by it a second time, I thought I perceived a shadowy form at the window of the adjoining casement. As I approached it seemed to retreat; the whole, however, might have only been the vision of my wishes—my wishes!! But this girl piques me into something of interest for her.
About three miles from the castle, on the summit of a wild and desolate heath, I met the good Father Director of Inismore. He appeared quite amazed at the rencontre. He expressed great regret at my absence from the castle, insisting that he should accompany me a mile or two of my journey, though he was only then returning after having passed the night in ministering temporal as well as spiritual comfort to an unfortunate family at some miles distance.
“These poor people,” said he “were tenants on the skirts of Lord M’s estate, who, though by all accounts a most excellent and benevolent man, employs a steward of a very opposite character. This unworthy delegate having considerably raised the rent on a little farm held by these unfortunate people, they soon became deeply in arrears, were ejected, and obliged to take shelter in an almost roofless hut, where the inclemency of the season, and the hardships they endured, brought on disorders by which the mother and two chil dren are now nearly reduced to the point of death; and yesterday, in their last extremity, they sent for me.”
While I commiserated the sufferings of these unfortunates (and cursed the villain Clendinning in my heart,) I could not avoid adverting to the humanity of this benevolent priest.
“These offices of true charity, which you so frequently perform,” said I, “are purely the result of your benevolence, rather than a mere observance of your duty.”
“It is true,” he replied, “I have no parish; but the incumbent of that in which these poor people reside is so old and infirm, as to be totally incapacitated from performing such duties of his-calling as require the least exertion. The duty of one who professes himself the minister of religion, whose essence is charity, should not be confined within the narrow limitation of prescribed rules; and I should consider myself as unworthy of the sacred habit I wear, should my exertions be confined to the suggestions of my interest and my duty only.
“The faith of the lower order of Catholics here in their priest,” he continued, “is astonishing: even his presence they conceive is an antidote to every evil.—When he appears at the door of their huts, and blends his cordial salutation with a blessing, the spirit of consolation seems to hover at its threshhold—pain is alleviated, sorrow soothed; and hope, rising from the bosom of strengthening faith, triumphs over the ruins of despair. To the wicked he prescribes penitence and confession, and the sinner is forgiven; to the wretched he asserts, that suffering here, is the purchase of felicity hereafter, and he is resigned; and to the sick he gives a consecrated charm, and by the force of faith and imagination he is made well.—Guess then the influence which this order of men hold over the aggregate of the people; for while the Irish peasant, degraded, neglected, despised, * vainly seeks one beam of conciliation in the eye of overbearing superiority; condescension, familiarity and kindness win his gratitude to him whose spiritual elevation is in his mind above all temporal rank.”
* “The common people of Ireland have no rank in society—
they may be treated with contempt, and consequently are with
inhumanity.”—An Enquiry into the Causes, &c.
“You shed,” said I, “a patriarchal interest over the character of priesthood among you here; which gives that order to my view in a very different aspect from that in which I have hitherto considered it. To what an excellent purpose might, this boundless influence be turned!”
“If,” interrupted he, “priests were not men—men too, generally speaking, without education, (which is in fact, character, principle, everything) except such as tends rather to narrow than enlarge the mind—men in a certain degree shut out from society, except of the lower class; and men who, from their very mode of existence (which forces them to depend on the eleemosynary contributions of their flock,) must eventually in many instances imbibe a degradation of spirit which is certainly not the parent of the liberal virtues.”
“Good God!” said I, surprised, “and this from one of their own order!”
“These are sentiments I never should have hazarded,” returned the priest, “could I not have opposed to those natural conclusions, drawn from well known facts, innumerable instances of benevolence, piety, and learning among the order. While to the whole body let it be allowed as priests, whatever may be their failings as men, that the activity of their lives, * the punctilious discharge of their duty, and their ever ready attention to their flock, under every moral and even under every physical suffering, renders them deserving of that reverence and affection which, above the ministers of any other religion, they receive from those over whom they are placed.”
* “A Roman Catholic clergyman is the minister of a very
ritual religion; and by his profession, subject to many
restraints; his life is full of strict observances, and his
duties are of a laborious nature towards himself, and of the
highest possible trust towards others.”—Letter on the
Penal Laws against the Irish Catholics, by the Right
Honourable Edmund Burke.
“And which,” said I, “if opposed to the languid performance of periodical duties, neglect of the moral functions of their calling, and the habitual indolence of the ministers of other sects, they may certainly be deemed zealots in the cause of the faith they profess, and the charity they inculcate!”
While I spoke, a young lad, almost in a state of nudity, approached us; yet in the crown of his leafless hat were stuck a few pens, and over his shoulder hung a leathern satchel full of books.
“This is an apposite rencontre,” said the priest—“behold the first stage of one class of Catholic priesthood among us; a class however no longer very prevalent.”
The boy approached, and, to my amazement, addressed us in Latin, begging with all the vehement eloquence of an Irish mendicant, for some money to buy ink and paper. We gave him a trifle, and the priest desired him to go on to the castle, where he would get his breakfast, and that on his return he would give him some books into the bargain.
The boy, who solicited in Latin, expressed his gratitude in Irish; and we trotted on.
“Such,” said Father John, “formerly was the frequent origin of our Roman Catholic priests This is a character unknown to you in England, and is called here ‘a poor scholar.’ If a boy is too indolent to work and his parents too poor to support him, or, which is more frequently the case, if he discovers some natural talents, or, as they call it, takes to his learning, and that they have not the means to forward his improvement, he then becomes by profession a poor scholar, and continues to receive both his mental and bodily food at the expense of the community at large.
“With a leathern satchel on his back, containing his portable library, he sometimes travels not only through his own province, but frequently over the greater part of the kingdom. * No door is shut against the poor scholar, who, it is supposed, at a future day may be invested with the apostolic key of Heaven. The priest or schoolmaster of every parish through which he passes, receives him for a few days into his barefooted seminary, and teaches him bad Latin and worse English; while the most opulent of his schoolfellows eagerly seize on the young peripatetic philosopher and provide him with maintenance and lodging; and if he is a boy of talent or humour (a gift always prized by the naturally laughter-loving Milesians) they will struggle for the pleasure of his society.
* It has been justly said, that, “nature is invariable in
her operations; and that the principles of a polished people
will influence even their latest posterity.” And the ancient
state of letters in Ireland, may be traced in the love of
learning and talent even still existing among the inferior
class of the Irish to this day. On this point it is observed
by Mr. Smith, in his History of Kerry, “that it is well
known that classical reading extends itself even to a fault,
among the lower and poorer kind of people in this country,
[Munster,] many of whom have greater knowledge in this way
than some of the better sort in other places. He elsewhere
observes, that Greek is taught in the mountainous parts of
the province. And Mr. O’Halloran asserts, that classical
reading has most adherents in those retired parts of the
kingdom where strangers had least access, and that as good
classical scholars were found in most parts of Connaught, as
in any part of Europe.
“Having thus had the seeds of dependence sown irradically in his mind, and furnished his perisatetic studies, he returns to his native home, and with an empty satchel to his back, goes about raising contributions on the pious charity of his poor compatriots: each contributes some necessary article of dress, and assists to fill a little purse, until completely equipped; and, for the first time in his life, covered from head to foot, the divine embryo sets out for some sea-port, where he embarks for the colleges of Douay or St. Omer’s; and having begged himself, in forma pauperis, through all the necessary rules and discipline of the seminary, he returns to his own country, and becomes the minister of salvation to those whose generous contributions enable him to assume the sacred profession. *
* The French Revolution, and the foundation of the Catholic
college at Maynooth, has put a stop to these pious
emigrations.
“Such is the man by whom the minds opinions, and even actions of the people are often influenced; and, if man is but a creature of education and habit, I leave you to draw the inference. But this is but one class of priesthood, and its description rather applicable to twenty or thirty years back than to the present day. The other two may be divided into the sons of tradesmen and farmers, and the younger sons of Catholic gentry.
“Of the latter order am I; and the interest of my friends on my return from the continent procured me what was deemed the best parish in the diocese. But the good and the evil attendant on every situation in life, is rather to be estimated by the feelings and sensibility of the objects whom they affect, than by their own intrinsic nature. It was in vain I endeavoured to accommodate my mind to the mode of life into which I had been forced by my friends. It was in vain I endeavoured to assimilate my spirit to that species of exertion necessary to be made for my livelihood.
“To owe my subsistence to the precarious generosity of those wretches, whose every gift to me must be the result of a sensible deprivation to themselves; be obliged to extort (even from the altar where I presided as the minister of the Most High) the trivial contributions for my support, in a language which, however appropriate to the understandings of my auditors, sunk me in my own esteem to the last degree of self-degradation; or to receive from the religious affection of my flock such voluntary benefactions as, under the pressure of scarcity and want, their rigid economy to themselves enabled them to make to the pastor whom they revered. * In a word, after three years miserable dependence on those for whose poverty and wretchedness my heart bled, I threw up my situation, and became chaplain to the Prince of Inismore, on a stipend sufficient for my little wants, and have lived with him for thirty years, on such terms as you have witnessed for these three weeks back.
* “Are these men supposed to have no sense of justice that,
in addition to the burthen of supporting their own
establishment exclusively, they should be called on to pay
ours; that, where they pay sixpence to their own priest,
they should pay a pound to our clergymen; that, while they
can scarce afford their own a horse, they should place ours
in his carriage; and that when they cannot build a mass-
house to cover their multitudes, they should be forced to
contribute to build sumptuous churches for half a dozen
Protestants to pray under a shed—Inquiry into the Causes of
Popular Discontents, &c. page 27.
“While my heart felt compassion, my tenderest sympathy is given to those of my brethren who are by birth and education divested of that scale of thought, and obtuseness of feeling, which distinguish those of the order, who, reared from the lowest origin upon principles the most servilizing, are callous to the innumerable humiliations of their dependent state——”
Here an old man mounted on a mule, rode up to the priest, and with tears in his eyes informed him that he was just going to the castle to humbly entreat his reverence would visit a poor child of his, who had been looked on with “an evil eye,” a few days back, * and who had ever since been pining away.
* It is supposed among the lower order of Irish, as among
the Greeks, that some people are born with an evil eye,
which injures every object on which it falls, and they will
frequently go many miles out of their direct road, rather
than pass by the house of one who has “an evil eye.” To
frustrate its effects, the priest hangs a consecrated charm
around the necks of their children, called “a gospel;” and
the fears of the parents are quieted by their faith.
“It was our misfortune,” said he, “never to have tied a gospel about her neck, as we did round the other children’s, or this heavy sorrow would never have befallen us. But we know if your reverence would only be pleased to say a prayer over her, all would go well enough!”
The priest gave me a significant look, and shaking me cordially by the hand, and pressing my speedy return to Inismore, rode off with the suppliant.
Thus, in his duty, “prompt at every call,” after having passed the night in acts of religious benevolence, his humanity willingly obeyed the voice of superstitious prejudice which endowed him with the fancied power of alleviating fancied evils.
As I rode along, reflecting on the wondrous influence of superstition, and the nature of its effects, I could not help dwelling on the strong analogy which in so many instances appears between the vulgar errors of this country and that of the ancient as well as modern Greeks.
St. Chrysostom, * relating the bigotry of his own times, particularly mentions the superstitious horror which the Greeks entertained against “the evil eye.” And an elegant modern traveller assures us, that even in the present day they “combine cloves of garlic, talismans, and other charms, which they hang about the necks of their infants, with the same intention of keeping away the evil eye.”
* “Some write on the hand the names of several rivers, while
others make use of ashes, tallow, salt for the like
purposes—all this being to divert the ‘evil eye.’”
Adieu.