description and delineation of Clondalkin Tower, is all that has been effected in this way. To undertake and complete a record of the kind proposed, in a spirit and style worthy of the subject, would surely be a labour of glory, and ought to be a labour of love for any Irishman. The author of such a work, when committing it to the immortality of print, might almost be justified in addressing the objects of his antiquarian love, in the language of the poet, when promising to his mistress the deathlessness of his own "powerful rhyme:"

"When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn,
This living record of your memory.

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTH.

ON returning to Dublin, my first business was to repair the mistake I had committed on my former journey to the south, in passing by CASHEL. Accordingly I now devoted a day to make the visit, then omitted. Of this I have already given a short account in my former volume; having transferred the narrative thither for obvious topographical reasons.

Besides my desire to see a little more of the Capital of Ireland before leaving the country, I had two other objects in view in revisiting Dublin, namely, to see the Model Schools and the College of Maynooth.

In the present Chapter I propose to give, at some length, the results of my visit to the College; and in the next, I hope to be able to combine with my brief notice of the Model Schools, a more detailed account of the state of Education in Ireland generally.

The College of Maynooth is about fifteen English miles from Dublin, on the line of the Midland or Gal

way railway. It adjoins a small town of the same name, which contains about 2000 inhabitants, and is rather a neat and clean-looking place. There is a sort of square or open space at one end of the town, one side of which is fronted by the College, another by the parish church of Larachbryan, and the old castle of Maynooth; and a third, by the gate which leads to Carton, the seat of the Duke of Leinster. The old castle of Maynooth, a fine ruin, gives additional dignity and interest to the place.

Not having an introduction to any members of the College, we threw ourselves on the kindness of the first gentleman we met with, and were most courteously received, and kindly shown over the whole place by one of the senior pupils, a very intelligent and gentlemanly youth of eighteen or nineteen. There was no reserve or restriction on his part, in showing us whatever we desired to see, or in giving us whatever information we sought at his hands. In his conduct and manner, there was the same good breeding and the same open cheerfulness which we might expect from an undergraduate of Oxford or Cambridge, doing the honours of his College to strangers. And I may here remark, that the bearing, dress, and address of the students generally, were decidedly those of gentlemen; though here and there, a critical eye might detect indications of a humbler fortune and breeding than are to be met with at the English Universities.

The College consists of two quadrangles, or

rather of the three sides of two quadrangles, one behind the other; one old and one new; the former a piece of patchwork, very ugly and barracklike; the latter, a bran-new erection in Pugin's best style, though little decorated. The length of the front of the old College is about 400, and that of the new about 300 feet.

The interior arrangements of the New College are made on a large and handsome scale. There is a fine fine corridor, with a roof of peculiar construction, all round the three sides of the quadrangle, into which the lecture and class-rooms, as also some of the students' rooms, open. refectory is a noble hall, and the library a spacious and well-contrived apartment.

The

The students' private rooms up-stairs are good as to size and accommodation, but there is in them a great defect as to warming and ventilation; there being no chimneys, and, as far as I could see, no provision for the admission of warm fresh air, or for the escape of foul.

By means of the additional accommodation supplied by the new buildings, every student will now have his separate room; an arrangement which must greatly conduce to the personal comfort of the young men, as well as add to their facilities for study. Sir Francis Head supposes, that this appropriation of a room to each student, must "materially increase the monastic severity of the education;" but I own I cannot see how this can be the

case, since these rooms are merely bedrooms; all the studies of the College being conducted in public halls and lecture-rooms.1

The new buildings of the College, besides the public halls and lecture rooms, contain 215 private rooms for students. The number of students on the College books at the time of our visit, including those of the upper and lower schools, and the Dunboyne scholars, amounted to the full complement of 520, viz., 500 ordinary students, and 20 on the Dunboyne Foundation.

The following brief but authentic history of Maynooth College I extract from that excellent authority for everything Irish, Thom's Irish Almanac ;' and for the details that succeed, I am chiefly indebted to the Eighth Report of the Commissioners of the Irish Education Inquiry, presented to Parliament in the year 1827. availing myself of this last stock of information, I have ascertained that it is equally applicable to the College now as in the year it was prepared.

Before

I take this opportunity of referring to Sir Francis Head's book, 'A Fortnight in Ireland,' for an excellent and very complete account of Maynooth; and, I may also add, of the Constabulary Force of Ireland. Had Sir Francis devoted more time to Ireland, and brought his admirable talents to bear, in the same systematic, business-like, and truthful manner, on other important Irish subjects, and on the state of Ireland generally, he would certainly have deterred inferior pens from submitting their humble notes and memorandums to the public. It is greatly to be lamented that so accomplished a writer should have descended to so low a ground of political partisanship as he has done in the Second Part of his book.