When we came near Petigo, the field for observation was much enlarged.  The road was then literally alive with pilgrims, and reminded me, as far as numbers were concerned, of the multitudes that flocked to market on a fair-day.  Petigo is a snug little town, three or four miles from the lake, where the pilgrims all sleep on the night before the commencement of their stations.  When we were about five or six miles from it, the road presented a singular variety of grouping.  There were men and women of all ages, from the sprouting devotee of twelve, to the hoary, tottering pilgrim of eighty, creeping along, bent over his staff, to perform this soul-saving work, and die.

Such is the reverence in which this celebrated place is held, that as we drew near it, I remarked the conversation to become slack; every face put on an appearance of solemnity and thoughtfulness, and no man was inclined to relish the conversation of his neighbor or to speak himself.  The very women were silent.  Even the lassitude of the journey was unfelt, and the unfledged pilgrim, as he looked up in his father’s or mother’s face, would catch the serious and severe expression he saw there, and trot silently on, forgetting that he was fatigued.

For my part, I felt the spirit of the scene strongly, yet, perhaps, not with such an exclusive interest as others.  I had not only awe, terror, enthusiasm, pride, and devotion to manage, but suffered heavy annoyance from the inroad of a villanous curiosity which should thrust itself among the statelier feelings of the occasion, and set all attempts to restrain it at defiance.  It was a sad bar to my devotions, which, but for its intrusion, I might have conducted with more meritorious. steadiness.  How, for instance, was it possible for me to register the transgressions of my whole life, heading them under the “seven deadly sins,” with such a prospect before me as the beautiful waters and shores of Lough Erne?

Despite of all the solemnity about me, my unmanageable eye would turn from the very blackest of the seven deadly offences, and the stoutest of the four cardinal virtues, to the beetling, abrupt, and precipitous rocks which hung over the lake as if ready to tumble into its waters.  I broke away, too, from several “acts of contrition” to conjecture whether the dark, shadowy inequalities which terminated the horizon, and penetrated, methought, into the very skies far beyond the lake, were mountains or clouds:  a dark problem, which to this day I have not been able to solve.  Nay, I was taken twice, despite of the most virtuous efforts to the contrary, from a Salve Regina, to watch a little skiff, which shone with its snowy sail spread before the radiant evening sun, and glided over the waters, like an angel sent on some happy-message.  In fact, I found my heart on the point of corruption, by indulging in what I had set down in my vocabulary as the lust of the eye, and had some faint surmise that I was plunging into obduracy.  I accordingly made a private mark with the nail of my thumb, on the “act of contrition” in my prayer-book, and another on the Salve Regina, that I might remember to confess for these devilish wanderings.  But what all my personal piety could not effect, a lucky turn in the road accomplished, by bringing me from the view of the lake; and thus ended my temptations and my defeats on these points.