the floor till Meelyer's heavy foot put the influence of the Catholic Church an end to its existence.

Guy had been right as usual. "Did you tell the poor old fellow his ghost was only a bat, sir?" he asked of his father.

But the rector had forgotten. A circumstance the more curious as he now recalled the fact that while reading and praying with old Angel he had observed a bat clinging to the top of the bed among the curtains.

in that country. During the greater portion of the seventeenth century the Irish priests were compelled by the penal laws passed by the Irish Parliament against Roman Catholics to go abroad for their education. They were trained for the ministry in colleges at Paris, Lisbon, Salamanca, which had foundations established for their education and support principally by the French, Spanish, and Portuguese sov

"Bat or no bat 'twere Meery," Meel-ereigns. At the outbreak of the French yer Sprite said. ""Twere old Meery, safe enough. And I jemmed my fut on 'er, thank th' Lord."

MARY E. MANN.

From The Contemporary Review.
THE IRISH PRIESTHOOD.

Revolution there were as many as three hundred and forty-eight Irish ecclesiastical students in Paris, out of a total of four hundred and seventyeight on the Continent; and one of the results of that tremendous social upheaval was the closing of the Irish College, and the dispersal of its students. The Irish Roman Catholic bishops naturally viewed this state of things with alarm, for it might mean at least a serious diminution in the supply of priests for missionary work in Ireland. They were desirous of having the priests educated and trained at home, under their own immediate control, but, though the legal ban against the education of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics in Ireland had just been removed, to establish and support a college for the purpose was utterly beyond their financial means. They therefore approached the government on the subject.

The year 1795 was probably the most fateful in Lodern Irish history. It is impossible to magnify or overrate the influences that a series of political events which occurred that year have exercised on the destinies of Ireland. It was in 1795 that the union between Great Britain and Ireland was finally determined on by Pitt. That year also saw the establishment in Ireland of two institutions as wide apart as the poles in inspiration and aims-the College of Maynooth and the Orange Society, which-as the fountain heads of two potent streams of antagonistic religious and political thought, that have now been permeating the people of Ire-plicity, judging from their various petiland for a century—have not attracted the attention they deserve from students of those complex Irish problems, political, religious, and social, which have vexed, and in all probability will continue to vex, British statesmen for many a year.

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The Roman Catholic bishops at this time were all old men, of antique sim

tions and addresses to the government, and their spirits were bowed and humbled by the operation of the penal enactments. The immediate predecessors of these ecclesiastics lived, as a rule, in | France, or Italy, or Spain, and only ventured on rare occasions to visit Ire land to discharge their episcopal duties, when they resided, disguised, in humble farmhouses in remote parts of their dioceses, in order to evade the hostile attentions of the authorities. The bishops whose lot had fallen in better times, were, therefore, thankful to be allowed to pass their days in undis

turbed obscurity in Ireland. They ascribed the improvement in their position, through the relaxation of the penal laws, solely to the good-will of the government in London, and not to the influence of more liberal views in politics and religion operating on the members of both Houses of the Irish Parliament. They were, consequently, steadfast and consistent supporters of the British connection, as they declared in many addresses to the throne. They held severely aloof from the movements of the time for the extension of political freedom and the social improvement of the people. They gave but a passive countenance, rather than an active support, to the feeble and spasmodic movement for emancipation within the Catholic body itself during the fifty or sixty years it was entirely controlled by a few influential members of the gentry, and before it passed, at the opening of the present century, into the more resolute hands of O'Connell and the Catholic merchants and shopkeepers of Dublin; they were hostile to the Society of United Irishmen, which was first founded to obtain Parliamentary reform (including the admission of Catholics to Parliament) by constitutional means, but had, under the influence of the French principles of the time, developed into a secret revolutionary society for the establishment of an Irish republic; and, later on, for the same reasons, they gave their unanimous support to the project of the Union.

When, therefore, Dr. Troy, Archbishop of Dublin, presented a petition in 1794 to the lord lieutenant (the Earl of Westmoreland) on behalf of the prelates of the Roman Catholic communion in Ireland, praying the government to establish and endow a training college for the priesthood at home, in order that-as the petition ran-"they may no longer expose their youth to the contagion of sedition and infidelity, and the country to the danger of introducing the pernicious maxims of licentious philosophy," the government was, for several reasons, ready to listen with willing ear to the scheme. Ireland was

thoroughly disaffected. The revolutionary principles of the United Irishmen had permeated the middle classes; many of the gentry and aristocracy had also caught the contagion; and the small farmers and laborers who formed the vast bulk of the population, and had their own secret societies for their own immediate agrarian objects —were in complete sympathy with the movement, not because of its highflown sentiments of liberty, equality, and fraternity, for these things they did not understand, but because they thought it aimed at the overthrow of the landed class, to whom they ascribed all their social ills. The country was virtually ruled from Whitehall — notwithstanding the declaration of independence of 1782 with which the name of Henry Grattan is inseparably associated. The Irish Parliament was so venal that it was brought, by the distribution of patronage, completely under the control of the British government; and Pitt, engrossed in his great struggle with France, and unwilling to be diverted by domestic troubles, was evidently inclined to concede even Catholic Emancipation, in order to stem the rising tide of popular disaffection in Ireland. Lord Fitzwilliam was made | viceroy on the understanding, as most historians now agree, that Catholic Emancipation was to be granted. He arrived in Dublin on January 4, 1795. On February 12, Grattan, by arrangement with the viceroy, moved in the Irish House of Commons for leave to bring in a bill for the admission of Catholics to Parliament. But, when intelligence of the new policy reached George III., he insisted on the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, and on March 25, less than three months from the date of his arrival, that nobleman quitted Dublin amid one of the most remarkable demonstrations of national indignation and sorrow which the Irish capital has ever witnessed. Thwarted in this policy of concession, Pitt then determined on bringing about a union of the British and Irish Parliaments.

But, meantime, something had to be done to assuage the disappointed hopes

Imperial Parliament until 1845. It varied between £8,000 and £9,000. It came up every year in the Estimates for the Irish offices, and its rejection was invariably moved, but without success, by ultra-Protestant members, who contended that the taxpayers ought not to be compelled to pay for the propagation of the immoral doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.

Before 1845 the number of free studentships in the college was two hundred and fifty, the value of each being estimated at about £25 a year. But in 1845, Sir Robert Peel succeeded, with the help of the Whigs and the Repealers, and against the vehement oppo

of the Roman Catholics. It was deter- | The annual grant was continued by the mined to grant the prayer of the prelates in their petition to the government in the previous year. Accordingly a bill was carried by the government | through both Houses of the Irish Parliament with remarkable celerity, and without a single division in either House, voting a sum of £8,000 for the establishment of a college for the education and training of the priests. It received the royal assent of George III. on June 5, 1795. The act appointed as trustees of the college the lord chancellor of Ireland, the lord chief justice of the King's Bench, the chief justice of the Common Pleas, the chief baron of the Exchequer, all of whom were Protestants; six Roman Catholic lay-sition of the bulk of his own Tory men; the four Roman Catholic archбishops, and seven other Roman Catholic bishops; but the management of the college was practically left entirely to the ecclesiastics, and in a few years the judges were removed by Parliament from the Board of Trustees. An offer by the Duke of Leinster of a house and fifty-four acres of land at a nominal rent at Maynooth, about twelve miles from Dublin, and adjoining his demesne, was accepted, and on June 25, 1795, the college began its career with fifty students. At the end of the century there were one hundred and fifty students on the rolls.

Within four years the Irish Parliament had voted by annual grants a sum of £35,000 for the establishment of the college. In 1799 the trustees petitioned for an annual allowance of £8,000, at which sum they estimated the yearly expenses of the college; but a bill to provide that amount, after passing through the Commons, was rejected by the Lords on the ground that the original intention of Parliament was to assist in the Ioundation of the college, and not to maintain it permanently. | That year the college received nothing from the State. However, in the next session, the session of 1800, the last of the Irish Parliament, a sum of £8,000 towards defraying the annual charges of the college for the year ending March 25, 1801, was voted in the Estimates.

followers, in carrying a bill increasing the annual grant to the very substantial sum of £26,360, and by making the grant a permanent charge on the Consolidated Fund, he did away with the yearly debate on the college in the House of Commons. It was this bill, known as the Maynooth Improvement Bill, which led to Mr. Gladstone's historic resignation of the post of president of the Board of Trade, which he held in the Peel ministry, because the proposals of the bill were at variance with the views he had put forth in his famous pamphlet on "Church and State." He no longer entertained these views, he said; and as a private member he supported the measure in its various stages through the House of Commons; but, with a super-sensitiveness not often found in political life, he feared it might be supposed, if he remained in office, that his change of opinion was dictated by interested motives. By this act the number of free places in the college was increased to five hundred, £28 per annum being appropriated for the commons of each student, and two hundred and fifty of the students in the senior classes received in addition an allowance of £20 a year each in money. In order to provide the necessary accommodation for this large increase in the number of students, the act also granted a sum of £30,000 for the extension of the existing buildings and grounds.

On the disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1870, this annual grant of £26,360 to the college was withdrawn; and the trustees received as compensation a sum of £372,331.

The disendowment of the college has not led to any decrease in the number of the students, though the number of free places has been diminished by one half. In the centenary year of its foundation, there were no fewer than six hundred and twenty students in actual residence, which is the highest number the records of the college can show. The trustees of the institution since 1870 are the four archbishops and thirteen of the bishops. Its chief officials consist of a president, a vice-president, three deans, a bursar, and sixteen professors. According to a Parliamentary return published in 1854, the salary of the president since the act of 1845 was £594 12s.; of the vice-president £326 12s. 8d.; of the senior dean, £261; of the three junior deans, £241 each; and the salaries of the professors ranged from £241 up to £264. These salaries were, it will be admitted, low for such positions; but they may have been somewhat reduced after disendowment. Indeed, the stipends of dignitaries of the Catholic Church in Ireland are, as we shall see later, very modest. It is interesting to note in this connection, that down to 1827 the president got only one hundred guineas; the vice-president seventy guineas, and the deans and professors from fifty to seventy guineas per annum. The number of free places now on the public foundation of the college is two hundred and fifty, estimated at £30 a year each, which are divided amongst the twentyseven dioceses; and in addition to these there are sixty-six other free places in diocesan burses, founded since 1870 by bequests from bishops and priests. Nomination to the free places allotted to each diocese is in the hands of the bishop of the diocese. There is an entrance fee of £4 for all students, and the pension of students not in free places is £30 per annum. A sum varying from £8,000 to £10,000 is yearly received in pensions.

The Irish priests are, as a rule, the sons either of farmers or of shopkeepers. As may be imagined, in so intensely Catholic a country as Ireland it is considered a great social distinction in these classes to have a priest in the family. There is no prouder boast for a parent than to be able to say, "I've a son a priest." One of the pious notions associated with the priesthood is that no man can take holy orders without having "a vocation"-that is, that it can never happen by chance or accident; but is inevitably the result of a divine call or inspiration. In some cases, however, the choice of the calling is made by the parents for their favorite son-"the white-haired boy of the family"-in his early years; but he must be a quiet, retiring, religiously disposed lad, or be fond of study, or must show above his brothers the possession of mental attainments.

Once the selection is made, the parents subordinate almost everything to their grand ambition of giving a son to the service of the Church. The boy gets the best place at the table, the warmest corner by the hearth. He is never asked or expected to soil his hands about the shop or farm, and is regarded by all the family with deep respect, affection, and even reverence. He is first sent to the diocesan college, a scholastic institution found in the chief town of most of the twenty-seven diocèses in Ireland, established by the bishop of the diocese, and conducted principally by priests, and after a few years there, he goes, as a rule, to Maynooth.

No student is received at Maynooth unless he is designed for the home mission (priests for foreign missions being trained at All Hallows College, Dublin), and has a recommendation from his bishop, and is at least sixteen years of age. The full course of studies in the college extends over seven years. The first year is devoted to "rhetoric,” as it is called in the college, which includes English, Latin, and Greek; the second and third years are allotted to "philosophy," or mathematics, logic, and metaphysics; and the remaining four years

to "theology," or canon law, and eccle siastical history. There is a foundation known as “the Dunboyne Establishment" for the maintenance of about a dozen of the most distinguished students, who remain in the college for a period of three years beyond the ordinary course, in order to qualify themselves as doctors of divinity, or for professorships in the college. On an average, sixty students are ordained priests annually, which more than suffices to keep up the strength of about twenty-four hundred the secular priesthood of Ireland.

The re ding of the students, apart from their study of the prescribed textbooks of the different courses, seems to be confined to a narrow compass. The college possesses a large library, mainly theological, ecclesiastical, and devotional; but only the students in the theological classes have recourse to it under the supervision of the librarian. The reading of the junior students is mainly devotional. Light literature, such as fiction and poetry, is not, to say the least, encouraged; and newspapers are prohibited. Nevertheless, the students manage to keep themselves acquainted with, at any rate, the varying phases of Irish politics, in which, it is hardly necessary to say, they take the keenest interest.

Life at Maynooth may be pleasant enough to these ecclesiastical students. Few of them break down under it; and one never hears it condemned in after years by the priests who have gone through the ordeal. On the contrary, they invariably regard the Alma Mater with the deepest reverence and affection. But, measured by secular standards, the studies seem dry and hard, and run too much in a few narrow grooves; the life laborious and monotonous, the discipline of a too strict and a too rigid character. Estrangement from even the innocent pleasures and recreations of life, during seven of man's most impressionable years, may, in one sense, be the fittest preparation for the celibate ministry of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland; but one cannot help thinking that the priests would be all the better suited for their office if, instead of an almost complete absorption in the spiritual aspect of the ministry, as the courses and the textbooks show, more attention were given at Maynooth to the secular side of life

The college is divided into two houses -the senior house, and the junior house; and the students of the two houses are not allowed to communicate with each other, except by permission of the dean. They take meals together, but at meals conversation is strictly prohibited. During meals, however, a student reads aloud a chapter from the Bible, a few passages from a historical work-Lingard's "History of England" | being the favorite volume-followed by some extracts from the Roman Martyrology. With the exception of fifty students in the junior or "rhetoric" class, who sleep in double-bedded rooms, all the students have separate apartments, each being furnished as bed and sitting room. The hour of rising is 6 A.M., and at 10 P.M. all lights are extinguished. The working day is thus divided-nine hours to study and classes, two hours to religious services, and five hours to meals, exercise, and recreation. The exercise consists principally of walking about the extensive grounds of the college. Hand ball seems to be the only outdoor game practised; and all indoor games, such as chess, or draughts, or cards, are prohibited. On Wednesdays, if weather permits, the students take a long coun--to the inculcation of civic duties, to try walk together, accompanied by some of the deans or professors, but otherwise they are not allowed outside the grounds, and a breach of this rule is usually punished by expulsion. However, a scandal rarely, if ever, occurs. The moral character of the students is above suspicion.

the study of sociology, and to arousing in the students an interest in schemes and projects, apart from politics, for the amelioration of the social condition of the Irish people.

The young priest, on leaving Maynooth, is appointed by his bishop to the curacy of some parish of his native