se pictures, and
commence a certain number of prayers to it after the repetition of
which, they travel on their knees along the bare earth to the second,
where they repate another prayer peculiar to that, and so on, till
they finish the grand _tower_ of the interior. Such, however as are
not especially addictated to this kind, of locomotive prayer, collect
together in various knots through the chapel, and amuse themselves by
auditing or narrating anecdotes, discussing policy, or detraction;
and in case it be summer, and the day of a fine texture, they scatter
themselves into little crowds on the chapel-green, or lie at their
length upon the grass in listless groups, giving way to chat and
laughter.

* These are called the "Fourteen Stations of the Cross."

"In this mode, laired on the sunny side of the ditches and hedges, or
collected in rings round that respectable character, the Academician of
the village, or some other well-known Senachie, or story-teller, they
amuse themselves till the priest's arrival. Perhaps, too, some walking
geographer of a pilgrim may happen to be present; and if there be, he
is sure to draw a crowd about him, in spite of all the efforts of the
learned Academician to the contrary. It is no unusual thing to see such
a vagrant, in all the vanity of conscious sanctimony, standing in
the middle of the attentive peasants, like the nave and felloes
of a cart-wheel--if I may be permitted the loan of an apt
similitude--repeating some piece of unfathomable and labyrinthine
devotion, or perhaps warbling, from Stentorian lungs, some _melodia
sacra_, in an untranslatable tongue; or, it may be, exhibiting
the mysterious power of an amber bade fastened as a Decade to his
_paudareens_* lifting a chaff or light bit of straw by the force of its
attraction. This is an exploit which causes many an eye to turn from the
bades to his own bearded face, with a hope, as it were, of being able to
catch a glimpse of the lurking sanctimony by which the knave hoaxes them
in the miraculous.

* Pilgrims and other impostors pass these things upon the
people as miracles upon a small scale.

"The amusements of the females are also nearly such as I have drafted
out. Nosegays of the darlings might be seen sated on green banks, or
sauntering about with a sly intention of coming in compact with their
sweethearts, or, like bachelors' buttons in smiling rows, criticising
the young men as they pass. Others of them