the effect of the high altar lighted up for the celebration of mass in Catholic times; when the great aisle, now boxed up into compartments by the organ loft, stretched its venerable and unbroken length from the altar to the portal, thronged with kneeling worshippers. The picture delighted the woman. 'Oh!' cried she, clapping her hands, ‘I should like to see that!'- God grant you may yet.' returned I."

Then he would sometimes add,-" and he may yet grant it-England is steadily and gradually returning to the Catholic faith."

Comparing the cathedrals of Catholic times with those erected since the Reformation, he observed, "Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's afford us good specimens of this sort of contrast: the very architecture of the former seems to breathe the aspiring sentiment of Christianity; but St. Paul'sit is a noble temple to be sure; but, as for any peculiarity of Christian character about it, it might just as well be a temple to Neptune!"

CHAPTER XIII.

"The best-abused Man in the British Dominions"-O'Connell abused by William the Fourth-By George the Fourth-Personal Appearance of George the Fourth in 1794 and 1821His Object in coming to Ireland-Anecdote of his liaison with Mrs. Fitzherbert.

MR. O'CONNELL was in the habit of saying that he was the best-abused man in the British dominions. That he should have served as a target for the factious enemies of liberty to discharge their pop-guns at, is exceedingly natural, when we consider the prominent position he occupied as the champion of constitutional freedom.

"You are used to this now," I observed to him

one day; but did it not at first annoy you?" "Not a bit," he replied; "I knew the scoundrels were only advertising me by their abuse."

But he sometimes was the object of abuse of a less usual description than that of pamphleteers or newspaper-paragraph writers.

"I have had," said he, " the honour of sustaining some royal abuse. William the Fourth scolded me in a royal speech; but George the Fourth had previously bestowed a most royal malediction on me. I attended the first levée after the Emancipation Bill passed; the wretched king was suffering from an utterly broken constitution, and the presence chamber was kept as thin as it was possible, to preserve him from inconvenient crowding. When I got into the midst of it, approaching the throne, I saw the lips of his majesty moving; and thinking it possible he might be speaking to me, I advanced, in order to make, if requisite, a suitable reply. He had ceased to speak-I kissed hands and passed out. In some days I saw a mysterious paragraph in a Scotch newspaper, remarking on the strange mode in which an Irish subject had been received by his prince, who was stated to have vented a curse at him. I happened to meet the Duke of Norfolk, and asked him if he could explain the paragraph. "Yes,' said he,' you are the person alluded to. The day you were at the levée, his majesty said, as you were approaching, There is O'Connell !-G-d damn the scoundrel!'"

A recent writer had praised George the Fourth's colloquial abilities.

Why," said O'Connell, "from his rank, he of

course found ready listeners, and he could talk familiarly of royal personages, concerning whom there is usually some curiosity felt. That kind of talk might have passed for agreeable; but his favourite conversation was like that of a profligate, halfdrunken trooper."

"Was he, in your opinion, a handsome, princelylooking fellow?"

"When I saw him in 1794," replied O'Connell, "he was a remarkably handsome-faced man; his figure was faulty, narrow shoulders, and enormous hips; yet altogether he was certainly a very finelooking fellow. But when I saw him in Dublin in 1821, age and the results of dissipation had made him a most hideous object; he had a flabby, tallowcoloured face; and his frame was quite debilitated. He came to Ireland to humbug the Catholics, who, he thought, would take sweet words instead of useful deeds. Ah! we were not to be humbugged!

"I believe," he added, "that there never was a greater scoundrel than George the Fourth. To his other evil qualities he added a perfect disregard of truth. During his connexion with Mrs. Fitzherbert, Charles James Fox dined with him one day in that lady's company. After dinner, Mrs. Fitzherbert said, ' By-the-bye, Mr. Fox, I had almost forgotten to ask you, what you did say about me in the

House of Commons the other night? The newspapers misrepresent so very strangely, that one cannot depend on them. You were made to say, that the Prince authorised you to deny his marriage with me!'-The Prince made monitory grimaces at Fox, and immediately said, ' Upon my honour, my dear, I never authorised him to deny it.'-' Upon my honour, sir, you did,' said Fox, rising from table; I had always thought your father the greatest liar in England, but now I see that you are.'* Fox would not associate with the Prince for some years, until one day that he walked in, unannounced, and found Fox at dinner. Fox rose as the Prince entered, and said that he had but one course consistent with his hospitable duty as an English gentleman, and that was to admit him."

* One Sunday, in 1796, my maternal grandfather, who was the Protestant Rector of Ardstraw, on returning from church, told some members of his family who had spent the day at home, "that he had publicly prayed in the Litany for Mrs. Fitzherbert." On their expressing surprise, he replied, "I prayed for the Princess of Wales; and there is not, in the sight of Heaven, any other Princess of Wales than Mrs. Fitzherbert."