1829.J Irish Priests in particular. 503 



tion in mathematics, or an impossibility to the senses. They drew the 

 refined distinction between mysteries that are above reason, and mysteries 

 that are contrary to reason ; acquiescing in, but scarcely authenticating, 

 the latter ; while they assented, in common with the Christian world, to 

 the former. In the celebrated correspondence that took place in the last 

 century between some of our divines on the part of the English church, 

 and the doctors of the Soi'bonne on behalf of the Gallican, with a view 

 to ascertain how far both parties could go towards an union and consoli- 

 dation, the doctors of the Sorbonne consented to relinquish tradition as 

 a rule of faith, and to accept it, as we do, merely as an evidence. This 

 was a great step in the abandonment of those errors that were grafted 

 upon the Christian stock in the early collision with the pagans. The 

 eminent men who had the courage to acknowledge, in the face of a per- 

 secuting church, an erroneous principle of so much magnitude, may be 

 admitted as an inferior and second race of reformists. But the revolution 

 devastated their halls ; the seeds they were sowing in the land were 

 rudely dragged out by the ploughshare of infidelity ; and the dawn of a 

 Catholic Rkformation was overcast in its first blush by the clouds of 

 the great political storm. To them, however, may be fairly attributed 

 the awakening of that spirit of comparative Hberty which the church of 

 France maintains : for the G.illican church, with the solitary exception 

 of the unsettled temple of the United States, is the most independent 

 ecclesiastical institution that acknowledges the authority of the Roman 

 pontiff. 



I wonder that Grattan, the artist, did not give us a portrait of an 

 Irish priest — a being contra-distinguished in all the leading features, 

 moral and physical, from the professors of the Sorbonne. There is no 

 living painter could have done half so much justice to the peculiarities 

 of the race. He understood better than any body else the true character 

 and expression of the Irish face, which, like Irish mountain-scenery, is 

 remarkable for certain points that are not to be found elsewhere. Witness 

 his picture of the Irish Peasants, in Walker's gallery at Old Bond 

 Street — a sketch taken from life, and eminently faithful to nature. The 

 crouching gait and affected leer of the priest spring partly from the 

 habitual evasion contracted by his profession, and partly from the vul- 

 garity of his mind. Formerly, you might occasionally meet a gentleman 

 in the priesthood, amongst those of the old school, who had been edu- 

 cated in France : now, a polished priest is very rare indeed. The esta- 

 blishment of JMaynooth and the jealousy of the government have com- 

 bined to put an end to the course of foreign education ; so*that there is 

 no material alteration between the clown when he enters, and the plump 

 priestling when he leaves, the college, except in the fund of congenial 

 bigotry which he has amassed during his progress. In Maynooth all 

 books of a literary or liberal kind are strictly prohibited ; the students 

 are excluded from those mental indulgences, and even from the ordinary 

 relaxations of society, that might improve their manners or refine their 

 taste. Every art that can be devised to prevent them from acquiring 

 knowledge, or even gentihty, is put into operation ; and the raw mate- 

 rial, originally coarse, rough, and intractable, is manufactured into an 

 instrument of priestcraft, in which the elements of ignorance and barba- 

 rity are admirably preserved. They drive out all kinds of devils at 

 Maynooth except those — they have no power over the sensual, the besot- 

 ted, or the malicious marks of the beast. When it is remembered that 



