highways are marvellously perfect. Nor, in them are comfort and convenience disregarded. They have a gravelled footpath, bordered with stone, and, at intervals, many a handsome seat, on which an anagram, with the date, 1847, informs you to whose munificence, and kind superintendence, you are indebted for this accommodation.

After visiting Carn Morval, from whence is a magnificent view of the pool, there is an ascent to the telegraph, which rises two hundred and ten feet above the level of the sea. Near it again is a fine menhir, or upright stone, probably an object of Druidical worship. There is also an opened barrow, or tomb, of great extent, and very perfect. The Catholics do not seem here, as in Brittany, to have added crosses to these idols, and so to have appropriated them to their own faith. In the course of my walk I saw another of these shapeless rocks, and barrows almost numberless, some being in remarkably fine preservation. There is a farm also, called Normandy, so named, perhaps, by some emigrant from old Neustria, as our countrymen in Australia bear with them the remembrance of their native homes. We passed Inisidgen point, Sandy bar, the Crow rock, and Helveor, which are so many points of beauty, each with its peculiar features, redeeming it from monotony, and giving to it its own wild stamp and impress. After visiting the neighbourhood of Mount Todden, and so completing the circuit of the island, we turned inland. We remarked many farm-houses, evidently in a most prosperous state, and many comfortable cottages. The crops were extremely good, the principal one, being here, as elsewhere, the early potato. If you want to judge of the character

I

of a landlord, go and look at the condition of his farmhouses, and of his peasantry.

On a large open space, called the Green, there was a considerable number of young people, of both sexes, collected, the men playing at cricket, and the women and children in groups watching them. Being Easter Tuesday, I find that to-day an annual fair or feast is held in this place, and is, I should think, a relic of some custom handed down from other times. The locality too is singular, for the Green is just above Holy Vale, and the celebration was, probably, in some way connected with the ecclesiastics, and under their patronage, and was meant to be an indulgence after the mortifications of Lent.

From the crest of the descent to Holy Vale, called Maypole hill, the view is very beautiful. The Pulpit rock and the old church are in the distance. Around you lie cultivated fields, interspersed with the sweetest wilderness of flowering gorse and heather that you ever had the good fortune to see. Hugh Town and its "castled crags" stand out in bold relief. Above your head, a peregrine falcon is wheeling with long majestic swoops. And at your feet reposes in its picturesque groves, here full of rare and strange loveliness, though no longer consecrated by affection or by piety, the little oasis of Holy Vale.

Lacordaire, the famous Roman Catholic preacher, has said, very finely, that while human institutions fade away and are forgotten, with their founders, there seems a spell and a sacredness in the mere name of God that all men confess and honour. Look at the poets. Ask five men out of ten in the world who Homer was, and they will stare at you in

silent surprise. How many nations did the philosophy of Plato rule or convert? How much do people of the present day, or of many a one that is past, care about Socrates? Did Demosthenes found a sect, or do men bow at the name of Cicero? Look on the other hand at the contrast shown by religion, even when false. Look at the religious books, even of Heathenesse. What makes "the Kings," the "Vedas," the law of Confucius, the "Koran," immortal? what gives them sweetness after the lapse of so many ages, and vitality, and life, so that thousands obey them, and live by them, and die for them, false and fictitious though they be? It is because the superstructure may be unreal, but the idea is truth. There is a power in the very word "God" that forbids all who invoke it to die. There is, in the very name, THAT which preserves from putrefaction even imposture and deceit, as the call had strength to evoke the shade of the prophet Samuel, even though spoken by lying lips.

So is it with the remembered sanctity that still hovers around the sites of these old religious foundations. The dwellers in them had generally peaceful and contemplative minds; they loved the beauties of Nature, and they chose their abiding places with a painter's and a poet's eye. So their memory lingers after them; the same charms that soothed their spirits still cling to the nooks hallowed by their retirement, heightened, and filled with holy melancholy, by the ruins that remind us of them. The hand of violence, that drove out from their cells the sons and daughters of God, is powerless here. In the domain of fancy, and amid the shadows of the past, there is a world in which exist the people of prayer, connected with us still by a dim feeling of

our common ancestral faith, by the conscious kindred of our human hopes and fears. With such a spirit as this, even in this day of professed enlightenment, there may be some who will pause for a moment in the realities of life, to read the following legend.

A LEGEND OF HOLY VALE.

T was Tuesday in Easter-week.

The feast had fallen late at the season

of which I write, so that the beautiful valley was full of blossoms, and of green leaves, putting forth their gems timidly, as if aware of their boldness in thus venturing out so early in the world. A spell of loveliness seemed to float over the little enchanted hollow, birds sang sweetly, in the fresh and fragrant shade,

leaves and buds gleamed and danced in the sunlight, and all uniting together, in one offering of

material glory, and of spiritual and ineffable thankfulness, ascended to God's throne above. The orisons of Nature and of man never, peradventure, arose on high, with less of the serpent to clog their wings.

It was, indeed, a bright day, and man strove to make it brighter still. After the season of that dread Passion, succeeding the painful vigils of Lent, it was the custom of the day to indulge the people with many sports and pastimes, some of them strangely inconsistent with our ideas of ancient