“Yis, Phadrick, I’ll illusthrate your intellects by divinity.  You see, Phadrick, you’re to suppose me to be in the chair, as confessor.  Very well,—­or valde, in the larned languages—­Parra Ghastha comes to confess to me, an’ tells me that Barny Branagan wants to be paid for his goats.  I tell him it’s a disputed point, an that the price o’ the goats must go to the church.  On the other hand, Barny Branagan tells me that Parra Ghastha wishes to be paid for his mare.  I say again, it’s a disputed point, an’ that the price o’ the mare must go to the church—­the amount of the proceeds to be applied in prayer towards the benefit of the parties, in the first instance, an’ of the faithful in general afterwards.”

“Phadrick!!!”

“Oh, that I may never, but he bates the globe!”

Denny’s character is a very common one in the remote parts of Ireland, where knowledge is novelty, and where the slightest tinge of learning is looked upon with such reverence and admiration, as can be properly understood only by those who have an opportunity of witnessing it.  Indeed, few circumstances prove the great moral influence which the Irish priesthood possesses over the common people more forcibly, than the extraordinary respect paid by the latter to such as are designed for the “mission.”  The moment the determination is made, an incipient sanctity begins, as it were, to consecrate the young priest; and a high opinion of his learning and talents to be entertained, no matter how dull he may be so far as honest nature is concerned.  Whatever he says is sure to have some hidden meaning in it, that would be’ highly edifying, if they themselves understood it.  But their own humility comes in here to prop up his talents; and whatsoever perplexity there may be in the sense of what he utters, is immediately attributed to learning altogether beyond their depth.

Love of learning is a conspicuous principle in an Irish peasant; and in no instance is it seen to greater advantage, than when the object of it appears in the “makins of a priest.”  Among all a peasant’s good and evil qualities, this is not the least amiable.  How his eye will dance in his head with pride, when the young priest thunders out a line of Virgil or Homer, a sentence from Cicero, or a rule from Syntax!  And with what complacency and affection will the father and relations of such a person, when sitting during a winter evening about the hearth, demand from him a translation of what he repeats, or a grammatical analysis, in which he must show the dependencies and relations of word upon word—­the concord, the verb, the mood, the gender, and the case; into every one and all of which the learned youth enters with an air of oracular importance, and a pollysyllabicism of language that fails not in confounding them with astonishment and edification.  Neither does Paddy confine himself to Latin or Greek, for his curiosity in hearing a little upon all known branches of human learning is boundless.  When