ly make respecting the enormous assumption of power by the Romish priests of Ireland. My mind glanced back in painful retrospection; an instance of that undue influence occurred to me, and it forced a groan from my heart. Poor Amy!at last that word is written, which in all the course of my rambling retrospections I could never force my pen to write. Yes, poor Amy, thy wrongs, thy trials, thy meek endurance rose up before me, and I felt be told. No, such feelings cannot CHAPTER XI. AMY FITZGERALD was the daughter of a man of property and respectability in a remote part of Ireland. Her mother and mine were bosom friends, companions, and near relatives the two former they continued until that divider of so many girlish companionships, marriage, parted them. The one was married to a retired country clergyman, the other to a Roman Catholic gentleman of for tune. Mr. Fitzgerald, though bearing the appellation of Christian, was in fact an unbeliever in all religions; he would as soon have mar ried a Jewess, or a Mahometan as he did a Protestant; yet pride, or some other motive made him insist on having his children brought up in the Catholic faith. His wife readily assented: she knew of little difference, except in form, between both religions, and she thought one was as good as another; so that, though she remained a nominal Protestant herself, she felt no uneasiness at her children being Roman Catholics. She had moved on quietly and happily the smooth-flowing eighteen years of her unmarried life uniting a pleasing person with a sweet and amiable disposition, and a mild affectionate manner: she knew few who did not love her, and few whom she did not love. Like some quiet little stream that flows on unruffled through a flowery pasture land, the eye that traced her gentle course could not foresee that it was to become troubled and turbid and agitated, to be impeded by rocks, and tossed by obstacles, that its calmness was to be lost, and its appearance changed. But so it was, and such is the fate of many another. She had married, and married she knew not what she left her quiet home, her girlish happiness, her innocent pursuits, and she left them for heartlessness and contempt in the house of a husband. Mr. Fitzgerald's friends did not like his unassuming wife; they could tell much that she was not; they could sum up in one word what she was. She was not rich, she was not talented, she was not clever, brilliant, notable, or accomplished and she was a Protestant. He learnt to treat her with indifference, and soon with superciliousness: she encountered trials and provocations, and she had not strength to oppose, or resolution to bear them, so she sunk into a quiescent state of feeling neither seeming to suffer or enjoy, to hope or fear. Such was her state till religion brought its heavenly aid, its divine panacea for all human ills. My dear mother's mind had lately been directed to the subject, and she strove to bring her friends to the enjoyment of it. For who will not tell a beloved and suffering friend of the physician who has healed all their maladies, who has recovered them from all their , sicknesses? To poor Mrs. Fitzgerald she told not in vain that there was a balm in Gilead for her relief that there was a physician there. She soon found the comforts of which she told her; she felt the blessed supports of religion, and she learnt again to hope and to rejoice. But religion is still, in some way or other, attended by its cross: if not displayed in external trials, it is felt in inward conflicts. If she recovered her capability of enjoying, she recovered also, keenly recovered her capability of suffering. She had learnt to feel for immortal souls and there was her husband: what though he was proud, unfeeling, over - bearing-still he was her husband, — and Oh! his state was awful! And then her children-her darling little innocents-training up as heirs of the same moral evils ; little victims, to be immolated at the shrine of their father's pride: brought up to be no matter what so they bore the title of Catholics. Now she felt the full misery of being united to one who was not of one heart and one way' with herself, one with whom indeed there could be no union but in words. She was not the instructer of her children; one by one, as they became capable of instruction, the priest, who lived in the house as chaplain to the family, became their teacher. Such was her state when Amy was born; the last, the best beloved, the loveliest of all her children. At the time of her birth the state of the family, in regard to religion, might seem to resemble that of the people who cast away their old idolatry before they had received a new religion. Her father in some public business had taken the side which his priest wished him not to take; but Mr. Fitzgerald not being then under much apprehension of the terrors of the church, nor in great subjection to priestly influence, stoutly maintained a Britain's prerogative of thinking and acting for himself and so the indignant chaplain left his house, and retired to one in the neighbourhood, until this rebellious son of the church should be terrified into submission and when summoned to baptize the child, not only peremptorily refused for himself, but for his whole brotherhood: thus condemning this guiltless infant, (according to the Roman Catholic ideas) to punishment for the father's fault, if it died unbaptized. But the Jesuit for once calculated wrong; he dealt with an infidel, one whom all the thunders of the Vatican could not appal. He knew that the priests would soon court the reconciliation he would not seek, and so to give them an open proof of his indifference, although he thought it a matter of very little consequence whether the ceremony was performed at all or not, he sent for the Protestant rector, and little Amy was in form admitted a member of a church in which she was not to continue. But her poor mother for the time forgot this; she took her in her arms as a member of her own church, one who was to tread in her own steps, who might imbibe her own sentiments, and wept upon her baby face the tears of joy, of anxiety, thankfulness, and sorrow. Poor Amy! the complexion of thy short life partook of the mingled nature of thy mother's tears! Amy became her mother's idol; she felt a new interest in her; she watched with a peculiar emotion the dawning intellect, the attempts at speech, the tottering movements, that announced the commencement of her |