bequeathed in trust for the relief of once prosperous men reduced by vicissitude to want, but basely turned to personal aggrandisement by the false and fat trustee.* Sometimes he might be seen in those velvet lands later known as "The Bishop's Fields," breathing a prayer for the owner, Dr. Lindsay, who had done much for Irish archæology. At other times he would pursue the path that led to the well popularly believed to have been blessed by St. Patrick; but with this plausible tradition the learned Doctor had no patience, and he took some trouble in demonstrating that it originated in one of Jocelyn's fables. This path--at one time trod by pilgrims tendering homage to a holy well; at another by fashion, rank, and hobbling gout, in quest of the pleasure or relief with which a favourite spa is supposed to be invested-is now deserted by all unless the lonely shepherd or the browsing goat. The virtues of the well would seem to have been long out of fashion, alike with the devout and the dyspeptic, notwithstanding that Dr. Rutty compares its magnesian tone to the waters of Malvern. The historic student, however, may still be seen at times pursuing this deserted path, to explore the site of Ormond's camp, or the well-preserved walls of his magazine.

* Mr. D'Alton, in his "History of the County Dublin," p. 378, informs us that Sir D. Bellingham, Lord Mayor of Dublin, granted lands near Finglas, which, in 1764, were valued at £200 per annum, "for the relief of poor debtors in the City and Four Courts Marshalseas, and vested the same in the Clerk of the Crown, and one of the six clerks in Chancery, as trustees for that purpose. This laudable object, however, was never enforced, and the heirs of the trustees have appropriated the property." We directed the attention of William Gernon, Esq., Secretary to the Commissioners of Charitable Bequests, to the malappropriation in question; but although the ablest lawyers have been consulted by the Board, it appears that the property cannot be rescued. Apparently as if to make some philanthropic atonement for this spoliation. Charles Frizelle of Dublin, an ancestor of the author's family, bequeathed £200 in 1810 to trustees, who have faithfully applied the interest annually for the poor of Finglas.

"Ecclesiastical History of Ireland," vol. i., p. 275.

But men of peace and letters, rather than men of blood and battles, chiefly favoured this hamletfrom the year 807, when Flan Mac Kelly of Finglas, a famous anchorite and scribe, died, to the days of Parnell, King, Delany, and Swift. "I have just come from Finglas, where I have been drinking your health," writes Addison to Swift in 1710.

Forgetting present sorrows in the contemplation of the past, Dr. Lanigan loved to wander through picturesque fields, fertile with bright memories, and to moralise on the mutability of human happiness and fame. Young was never so happy as when wandering solitary through a churchyard, and courting thoughts of gloom. Lanigan was also given to the society of the dead; but he derived more than thoughts of gloom from the association. The old graveyard of Finglas, the happy asylum for the poor sufferers who at last died in Dr. Harty's so-called asylum, lay close by. To this rural cemetery, where Lanigan himself was destined ere long to sleep, he often bent his course, and mused among the graves of priests and prelates, apostles and apostates,* knights and patriots, madmen and sages, and the rude forefathers of the hamlet. Here judges rest-judged according to their worksamong the graves of some whose larcenies earned early death; commanders, too, skilled in killing-at last laid low themselvest; and shepherds sleep with the flock whom for forty years they had guarded with unsleeping vigilance. The good had passed away, but other losses were more legitimately deplored by Dr. Lanigan. He bemoaned the loss of that valuable memoir of St. Canice, which, as Usher records, had

*The Rev. Samuel Mason, a Roman Catholic priest, having read his recantation in Christ Church, before Sir H. Sydney, received, in 1567, the living of Finglas; but, dying in the following year, was buried in this churchyard.

† Baron Pocklington is interred here; also Colonel Bridges, Captain Flower, and others, whose military services are duly enumerated. One stone over Father Benson records that for forty years he was the zealous pastor of Finglas.

long been preserved within Finglas Abbey; and the old stone cross, defaced by the iconoclastic hands of

Cromwell's soldiers, received, we may be assured, a tear of sympathy.

Beneath the dark shelter of the yews planted by Canice's own hand, he thought of the terrible consequences which, Cambrensis tells us, pursued the English archers who sacrilegiously despoiled them to make bows. Sometimes the old man found himself in Donsoghly Castle-at other times in Drumcondra churchyard, where Grose and Gandon-both names dear to Ireland-sleep; and one day at this time, a black hearse, nodding its white plumes, might be seen wending its way thither, and enclosing the mortal part of a gifted young poet, Thomas Furlong, to whom Lanigan had often shown considerate attention when a reader at the Royal Dublin Society. Previous to his death in 1827, Lanigan occasionally met him at Fin

glas, which the poet had often visited, and under the signature of "The Hermit in Ireland," contributed some sparkling descriptions of its many sports to The London and Dublin Magazine for 1825. It is rather remarkable that, like Lanigan, Furlong was fond of wanderings and ponderings in the very district to which his body was consigned; and his poem, "Upon Drumcondra-road I strolled," will long live. Another Finglas brooder, about this time, was the once noisy Watty Cox, now retired from the storm of politics. He outlived Lanigan by a few years, and received the last sacraments from the pastor of Finglas.

The atmosphere of Finglas was holy and wholesome. Anciently a rural bishopric, the Annals of the Four Masters record the deaths of many of its abbots and prelates. In the year 1860, during some excavations at Finglas, a coffin was discovered containing the remains of a bishop in remarkable preservation, as if embalmed. The hand still grasped the crozier, and even the episcopal ring still shone upon the finger. The mitre and vestments were also in comparatively good preservation. A medical gentleman in the neighbourhood, more curious than reverential, anxious to ascertain whether any process of embalment had been pursued, disinterred the remains, and removed a portion of the face. The rector (who is by law custodian of the churchyard) very properly threatened legal proceedings, and compelled the gentleman in question to replace the body and close the grave.

The soil is indeed rich in what archeologists call "finds." The stone cross, of which we have given a drawing, owes its re-erection to the Rev. Mr. Walsh, one of the authors of the History of Dublin, who having heard that it had been flung into a hole by Cromwell's soldiers, and covered with rubbish, dug up the ground until it came to light. This polished Irishman was vicar of Finglas during Lanigan's residence-a circumstance which helped to impart addi

tional attraction to the hamlet. The exhumation of the cross took place in 1816, and Lanigan was probably present on that interesting occasion.

Pastoral peace filled the place, broken only by the melodious chirping of birds, the distant tinkle of the sheep-bell, or the gentle murmur of the river, which, as Jocelyn tells us, St. Patrick crossed after performing several miracles at Finglas. At eventide, 'tis true, an important and somewhat noisy visitor regularly came, presenting in its rapid, red, panoramic progress down the village hill a not uninteresting object. A merry bugle, raising distant echoes, announces the advent of the Antrim Royal Mail, its passengers from "the Black North" white with dust, and dashed by horses' foam, but with countenances joyously radiant at the prospect of a long and tedious journey soon ending, and the honest welcome frank and free" of expectant friends in Dublin. The champing horses pause for a moment before a shebeen, to allow some weary traveller to wash the dust out of his throat; the boccagh receives his alms, and mutters "God-speed!" the guard cries" All right !" sees that the priming in his blunderbuss is safe; and away they go again, now hid from view by interposing trees, while anon the scarlet and gold of the guard peep out rapidly here and there among the interstices of their branches. The clatter of the horses' hoofs gradually dies away, and the neighbourhood once more relapses into a repose which the buzzing of the drone alone disturbs.

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If it were only for the advantages he derived from the quietude which soothed him at dusk to refreshing sleep, his residence at Finglas proved of undeniable benefit to him. His nerves had been previously much shattered; and whilst he reposed in the beating heart of the city, slumber after slumber was cruelly broken by the midnight shriek of the lost one, the guttural howl of the watchman, or the rumble of hackney coaches as they hurried homeward from the rout.