But notwithstanding all this, I noticed, through the gloom of the place, many who were actuated by genuine, unaffected piety, from whom charity and kindness beamed forth through all the disadvantages around them.  Such people, for the most part, prayed in silence and alone.  Whenever I saw a man or woman anxious to turn away their faces, and separate themselves from the flocks of gregarious babblers, I seldom failed to witness the outpouring of a contrite spirit.  I have certainly seen, in several instances, the tear of heartfelt repentance bedew the sinner’s cheek.  I observed one peculiarly interesting female who struck me very much.  In personal beauty she was very lovely—­her form perfectly symmetrical, and she evidently belonged to rather a better order of society.  Her dress was plain, though her garments were by no means common.  She could scarcely be twenty, and yet her face told a tale of sorrow, of deep, wasting, desolating sorrow.  As the prayers, hymns, and religious conversations which wont on, were peculiar to the place, time, and occasion—­it being near the hour of rest:—­she probably did not feel that reluctance in going to pray in presence of so many which she otherwise would have felt.  She kept her eye on a certain female who had a remote dusky corner to pray in, and the moment she retired from it, this young creature went up and there knelt down.  But what a contrast to the calm, unconscious, and insipid mummery which went on at the moment through the whole room!  Her prayer was short, and she had neither book nor beads; but the heavings of her bosom, and her suppressed sobs, sufficiently proclaimed her sincerity.  Her petition, indeed, seemed to go to heaven from a broken heart.  When it was finished, she remained a few moments on her knees, and dried her eyes with her handkerchief.  As she rose up, I could mark the modest, timid glance, and the slight blush as she presented herself again amongst the company, where all were strangers.  I thought she appeared, though in the midst of such a number, to be woefully and pitiably alone.

As for my own companion, she absolutely made the grand tour of all the praying knots on the promises, having taken a very tolerable bout with each.  There were two qualities in which she shone preeminent—­voice and distinctness; for she gave by far the loudest and most monotonous chant.  Her visage also was remarkable, for her complexion resembled the dark, dingy red of a winter apple.  She had a pair of very piercing black eyes, with which, while kneeling with her body thrown back upon her heels as if they were a cushion, she scrutinized, at her ease, every one in the room, rocking herself gently from side to side.  The poor creature paid a marked attention to the interesting young woman I have just mentioned.  At last, they dropped off one by one to bed, that they might be up early the next morning for the Lough, with the exception of some half-dozen, more long-winded than the rest whose voices I could hear at their sixth rosary, in the rapid elevated tone peculiar to Catholic devotion, until I fell asleep.