the south-west lay Lough Erne, with all its isles and cultivated shores; to the north-west lay Lough Derg, and truly never did I mark such a contrast.  Lough Derg under my feet—­the lake, the shores, the mountains, the accompaniments of all sorts presented the very landscape of desolation; its waters expanding in their highland solitude, amidst a wide waste of moors, without one green spot to refresh the eye, without a house or tree—­all mournful in the brown hue of its far-stretching bogs, and the gray uniformity of its rocks; the surrounding mountains even partook of the sombre character of the place; their forms without grandeur, their ranges continuous and without elevation.  The lake itself was certainly as fine as rocky shores and numerous islands could make it:  but it was encompassed with such dreariness; it was deformed so much by its purgatorial island; the associations connected with it were of such a degrading character, that really the whole prospect before me struck my mind with a sense of painfulness, and I said to myself, ‘I am already in Purgatory.’  A person who has never seen the picture that was now under my eye, who had read of a place consecrated by the devotion of ages, towards which the tide of human superstition had flowed for twelve centuries, might imagine that St. Patrick’s Purgatory, secluded in its sacred island, would have all the venerable and gothic accompaniments of olden time; and its ivied towers and belfried steeples, its carved windows, and cloistered arches, its long dark aisles and fretted vaults would have risen out of the water, rivalling Iona or Lindisfarn; but nothing of the sort was to be seen.  The island, about half a mile from the shore, presented nothing but a collection of hideous slated houses and cabins, which gave you an idea that they were rather erected for the purpose of tollhouses or police-stations than any thing else.

“I was certainly in an interesting position.  I looked southerly towards Lough Erne, with the Protestant city of Enniskillen rising amidst its waters, like the island queen of all the loyalty, and industry, and reasonable worship that have made her sons the admiration of past and present time; and before me, to the north, Lough Derg, with its far-famed isle, reposing there as the monstrous birth of a dreary and degraded superstition, the enemy of mental cultivation, and destined to keep the human understanding in the same dark unproductive state as the moorland waste that lay outstretched around.  I was soon joined by my guide and by two men carrying oars, with whom I descended from the ridge on which I was perched, towards the shores of the lake, where there was a sort of boat, or rather toll-house, at which the pilgrims paid a certain sum before they were permitted to embark for the island.  In a few minutes we were afloat; and while sitting in the boat I had time to observe my ferrymen:  one was a stupid countryman, who did not speak; the other was an old man with a Woollen