it did not then cost me a single effort of reflection, I think was revived and developed at a future period of my life, and became, perhaps to a certain extent, the means of opening a wider range of thought to my mind, and of giving a new tone to my existence.  Still, however, nothing except my idea of its external appearance disappointed, me; I accordingly ascended with the rest, and in a short time found myself among the living mass upon the island.

The first thing I did was to hand over my three cakes of oaten bread which I had got made in Petigo, tied up in a handkerchief, as well as my hat and second shirt, to the care of the owner of one of the, huts:  having first, by the way, undergone a second prostration on touching the island, and greeted it with fifteen holy kisses, and another string of prayers.  I then, according to the regulations, should commence the stations, lacerated as my feet were after so long a journey; so that I had not a moment to rest.  Think, therefore, what I must have suffered, on surrounding a large chapel, in the direction of from east to west, over a pavement of stone spikes, every one of them making its way along my nerves and muscles to my unfortunate brain.  I was absolutely stupid and dizzy with the pain, the praying, the jostling, the elbowing, the scrambling and the uncomfortable penitential murmurs of the whole crowd.  I knew not what I was about, but went through the forms in the same mechanical spirit which pervaded all present.  As for that solemn, humble, and heartfelt sense of God’s presence, which Christian prayer demands, its existence in the mind would not only be a moral but a physical impossibility in Lough Derg.  I verily think that if mortification of the body, without conversion of the life or heart—­if penance and not repentance could save the soul, no wretch who performed a pilgrimage here could with a good grace be damned.  Out of hell the place is matchless, and if there be a purgatory in the other world, it may very well be said there is a fair rehearsal of it in the county of Donegal in Ireland.

When I commenced my station, I started from what is called the “Beds,” and God help St. Patrick if he lay upon them:  they are sharp stones placed circularly in the earth, with the spike ends of them up, one circle within another; and the manner in which the pilgrim gets as far as the innermost, resembles precisely that in which school-boys enter the “Walls of Troy” upon their slates.  I moved away from these upon the sharp stones with which the whole island is surfaced, keeping the chapel, or “Prison,” as it is called, upon my right; then turning, I came round again with a circumbendibus, to the spot from which I set out.  During this circuit, as well as I can remember, I repeated fifty-five paters and aves, and five creeds, or five decades; and be it known, that the fifty prayers were offered up to the Virgin Mary, and the odd five to God!  I then commenced getting round the eternal beds, during which