s, not
with such an exclusive interest as others. I had not only awe, terror,
enthusiasm, pride, and devotion to manage, but suffered heavy annoyance
from the inroad of a villanous curiosity which should thrust itself
among the statelier feelings of the occasion, and set all attempts to
restrain it at defiance. It was a sad bar to my devotions, which,
but for its intrusion, I might have conducted with more meritorious.
steadiness. How, for instance, was it possible for me to register the
transgressions of my whole life, heading them under the "seven deadly
sins," with such a prospect before me as the beautiful waters and shores
of Lough Erne?

Despite of all the solemnity about me, my unmanageable eye would turn
from the very blackest of the seven deadly offences, and the stoutest
of the four cardinal virtues, to the beetling, abrupt, and precipitous
rocks which hung over the lake as if ready to tumble into its waters. I
broke away, too, from several "acts of contrition" to conjecture
whether the dark, shadowy inequalities which terminated the horizon,
and penetrated, methought, into the very skies far beyond the lake, were
mountains or clouds: a dark problem, which to this day I have not been
able to solve. Nay, I was taken twice, despite of the most virtuous
efforts to the contrary, from a _Salve Regina_, to watch a little skiff,
which shone with its snowy sail spread before the radiant evening sun,
and glided over the waters, like an angel sent on some happy-message. In
fact, I found my heart on the point of corruption, by indulging in what
I had set down in my vocabulary as the lust of the eye, and had some
faint surmise that I was plunging into obduracy. I accordingly made a
private mark with the nail of my thumb, on the "act of contrition" in my
prayer-book, and another on the _Salve Regina_, that I might remember
to confess for these devilish wanderings. But what all my personal piety
could not effect, a lucky turn in the road accomplished, by bringing me
from the view of the lake; and thus ended my temptations and my defeats
on these points.

When we got into Petigo, we found the lodging-houses considerably
crowded. I contrived, however, to establish myself as well as another,
and in consequence of my black, dress and the garrulous industry of my
epicene companion, who stuck close to me all along, was treated with
more than common respect. And here I was deeply impressed with the
remarkable contour of many vis