, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and the
Works of Alexander the Great; the manners, habits, customs, usages, and
the meditations of the Grecians; the Greek Digamma resolved, Prosody,
Composition, both in prose and verse, and Oratory, in English, Latin and
Greek; together with various other branches of learning and scholastic
profundity--_quoi enumerare longum est_--along with Irish Radically, and
a small taste of Hebrew upon the Masoretic text.

"Matthew Kavanagh, Philomath." (* See note at the end of this sketch.)

Having posted this document upon the hapel-door, and in all the public
places and cross roads of the parish, Mat considered himself as having
done his duty. He now began to teach, and his school continued to
increase to his heart's content, every day bringing him fresh scholars.
In this manner he flourished till the beginning of winter, when those
boys, who, by the poverty of their parents, had been compelled to go
to service to the neighboring farmers, flocked to him in numbers, quite
voracious for knowledge. An addition was consequently built to the
school-house, which was considerably too small; so that, as Christmas
approached, it would be difficult to find a more numerous or merry
establishment under the roof of a hedge school. But it is time to give
an account of its interior.

The reader will then be pleased to picture to himself such a house as I
have already described--in a line with the hedge; the eave of the back
roof within a foot of the ground behind it; a large hole exactly in the
middle of the "riggin'," as a chimney; immediately under which is an
excavation in the floor, burned away by a large fire of turf, loosely
heaped together. This is surrounded by a circle of urchins, sitting
on the bare earth, stones, and hassocks, and exhibiting a series of
speckled shins, all radiating towards the fire, like sausages on a
Poloni dish. There they are--wedged as close as they can sit; one with
half a thigh off his breeches--another with half an arm off his tattered
coat--a third without breeches at all, wearing, as a substitute, a piece
of his mother's old petticoat, pinned about his loins--a fourth, no
coat--a fifth, with a cap on him, because he has got a scald, from
having sat under the juice of fresh hung bacon--a sixth with a black
eye--a seventh two rags about his heels to keep his kibes clean--an
eighth crying to get home, because he has got a headache, though it may
be as well to hint, that ther