“MR. PURCEL, SIR—­The enclosed is for the Rev. Misther Harvey.  For God’s sake, give it to him as soon as you can; as I undherstand himself and family is starvin’ outright—­I daren’t give it to him myself, or be seen goin’ near his house.  Sure when we think of the good he done, himself an’ his family, whin they had the manes, it’s enough to make one pity them, especially when we know what they’re sufferin’ so quietly, an’ without makin’ any hubbub about it; but sure, God help us, there’s humbug enough in the counthry.  Don’t lose time, i’ you plase, Mr. Purcel, as I’m tould that they’re brought to the dry praitie at last, God help them.”

It was in the early part of the day of O’Driscol’s last triumph on Duke Schomberg, that John Purcel went to discharge to a clergyman in the next parish, a commission of a similar nature to that just recited.  He drove there on a car, accompanied by three policemen, avoiding, as well as he could, all narrow and dangerous passes, and determined to return, if at all practicable, by a different road, for such of late was the practice of the family, when out on business.  An it is, however, we shall leave him on his way and take the liberty of requesting our readers to anticipate his arrival, for the purpose of getting a glimpse at the condition of those to whom he was carrying some slight means of mere temporary relief.

The clergyman, whose desolate habitation he was about to visit, had passed about sixty winters, fifteen of which he had spent in that house, and thirty in the parish.  That is to say, he had been fifteen years curate, and fifteen rector, without ever having been absent more than a month or six weeks at a time; and even these absences occurred but rarely.  We remember him well, and with affection, as who of his survivors that ever knew him does not?  He was tall, that is, somewhat above the middle height, and until pressed down by the general affliction which fell upon his class and his family, he had been quite erect in his person.  He was now bent, however, as by a load of years, and on his pale face lay the obvious traces of sorrow and suffering.  But this was not all; whilst Destitution of the severest kind had impressed on that venerable countenance the melancholy exponent of her presence, Religion had also blended with it that beautiful manifestation of her unshaken trust in God; of patience, meekness, and a disposition to receive at his hands the severest dispensations of life, with a spirit of cheerful humility and resignation.  Take a cursory glance at his face, and there, no doubt, you saw at once that sorrow and suffering lay.  Look, however, a little longer; observe the benign serenity of that clear and cloudless eye; mark the patient sweetness of that firm and well-formed mouth, and the character of heroic tranquility that pervades his whole person, and sanctifies his sorrows, until they fill the heart of the spectator with reverence and sympathy, and his mind with a sense of the dignity, not to say sublimity, which religion can bestow upon human suffering, in which it may almost be said that the creature gains a loving triumph over the Creator himself.