low debauchery. And I hold it to be no mean part of education to seek to preserve the bodily and mental health, by the substitution, wherever it is practicable, of rational recreation and amusement, for the disgusting and debasing vices to which our working population are most addicted. Therefore, while calling on the friends of the system of Total Abstinence, to persevere in their noble efforts, I would also call on all who have the interests of the people at heart, to resist to the utmost the attempts now making to confine the working-men of our towns to the musty air of our streets, and the still more pestiferous atmosphere of the gin-shops, on the Sunday afternoon; and to promote every means of affording them not mere education, formally so called, but all kinds of innocent recreation and amusement during the evenings and spare hours of the other days of the week.

An admirable step in this direction has been made in Ireland, by the very general establishment of TEMPERANCE HALLS in connection with the individual associations of Teetotallers, in the different towns. This is a practice which ought to be more generally adopted in England and Scotland than it is; and obvious improvements might be made in such institutions, by giving them a still more attractive character than they at present possess,-by constituting them, in fact, THE CLUBS OF THE WORKINGMEN. Organised as they would be under the rigid rule of Temperance, no substantial objections could

be made against their being open on the afternoons and evenings of Sunday as well as the other days of the week, as it could not be doubted that it would not be the Churches so much as the Gin-Palaces that they would empty.

I would further suggest to some of my richer Teetotal friends, the expediency of making the experiment of opening Temperance Hotels at the country places most visited by the working-classes of the great towns on Sundays; as, for instance, at Greenwich, Richmond, Windsor, &c., for the Londoners. By making such places much more attractive than the ordinary public-houses, by their superior conveniences, comforts, and cheapness, I believe they would rob many of the former of their habitual visitors, and would thus tend to remove the only rational objection I have ever heard urged against the country excursions of our Londoners on the Sunday afternoons.

Monasterboice (which is said to be the modern corruption of the ancient name of Mainistir-Buithe, Monaster-Boece, Monastery of St. Boetius) is about three Irish miles from Drogheda, and will well repay a visit to it. The ruins, which consist of the remains of two small churches, sundry lofty stone-crosses, and a round tower, are all contained within a little square piece of ground surrounded by a low wall, standing quite solitary amid the half-cultivated fields. This its perfect isolation and loneliness, remote from all

sound of living thing, yet with the recent handiwork of man all around it, adds greatly to the strength of the mingled impressions which the singular ruins themselves must always inspire. They seem not only to lead the mind back to the longpast ages when they formed, as it were, a part of

the system of life and living things amid which they were placed, but to bring down to us and to our own system of life and action, those very ages themselves.

The Round Tower, as shown in the woodcut on the preceding page, has been shattered and broken at its top, partly, it is said, by lightning, partly by the slower action of time. It is understood to be 110 feet in height, and its circumference near the ground is about 50. The entrance to this tower is lower than any other I have seen, being only five or six feet above the ground; so that it proved no very difficult task to enter it. The whole of the interior walls are as well-hewn and smooth as the exterior; and the stones are so closely laid one on another, and so well cut, that scarcely any cement is visible. The internal diameter, at the height of the doorway, is barely nine feet-viz. three rather short paces. The whole space to the top is perfectly hollow, and I could discover neither projections nor indentations by means of which any flooring or scaffolding could be erected. The doorway is formed of sandstone, and is roundheaded; the rest of the tower is built of a slaty rock.

There are three great stone crosses in this lonely churchyard; two still standing; the other thrown down, (our guide said, by Cromwell,) broken in sunder and sadly mutilated. The largest of the standing crosses is between 19 and 20 feet high, bold and massive, and sculptured, front, back, and

sides, with innumerable figures in high relief, and every angle and vacant space filled up with the most delicate ornamental tracery. The other is only between 14 and 15 feet high, but is still finer in its sculpture and ornaments.

The old man who waited our approach to Monasterboice, and would insist upon acting the part of cicerone, designated these crosses respectively, by the names of St. Boyce's, St. Patrick's, and St. Colmkilla, this last being the name of the saint of the broken cross of Cromwell. It appears, however, that the learned have deciphered the old Irish inscription on the smaller of the standing crosses, which tells of its erection to the memory of a certain abbot of the place, by name Murdoch, who, on it, requests of the passer-by a prayer for his soul. The exact date of the erection is not ascertained, owing to the circumstance of there having been two abbots of this name, one of whom died in the year 844, and the other in the year 923; it seems certain that it was erected in memory of one of the two.'

These crosses are assuredly to be reckoned among the most interesting remains of antiquity anywhere to be seen; and it is impossible for any one, be his creed what it may, to look on them without emotion and a feeling of veneration ;-standing up thus loftily and lonely amid the grass of that deserted grave-yard, old and weather-worn, yet still beautiful, grand, and awful, as becomes the sacred and

'Petrie's Memoir on the Round Towers.