On her return that night, Mademoiselle reproached her with disobedience. "It is good, is it not," said Clemence, "for Mademoiselle's soul to worship God and to hear M. le Pasteur ?" "Certainly," said Mademoiselle. "It is also good for my soul," replied Clemence. "But you do not see," said her mistress, "that when my uncle hears of it he will say he will not suffer a heretic ? " "I have considered it," said Clemence. "If he finds it out, you will surely lose your place," continued Mademoiselle. 'He shall not find it out," answered Clemence, "I will tell him." Her mistress looked at her in amazement. "To lose my place will be worse than to lose bread," said Clemence; "but what did M. le Pasteur say? 'He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.' I love you, Mademoiselle; you have been most kind mistress, but you cannot save my soul." Mademoiselle was silent. The next morning Clemence went in search of M. Laborde. She found him in his library. Although she had counted the cost, her heart failed her as she knocked at the door. "Monsieur will pardon me," she said. "What for?" he asked. "You are a very good girl, Clemence, and want pardon less than anybody I know." "Monsieur has been very kind master," she said, tears trembling in her eyes, “but I must tell him something." 'Well," he said, looking at her with curiosity, for her manner led him to expect something important. "Monsieur tink me Catholique," she said, trembling. "Yes, and a very good one," he replied. "I am not," she said. "I have not been since six weeks and more." "You have not," he said angrily, "and why not?" "I have read the Bible," she said quietly; "and since I have read the Bible I am obliged to be a Protestant." "Ha! ha!" said M. Laborde, "very fine. Pray what does your priest say to this?" "When I am Catholique the priest would let me deceive you," she replied; "but now I am Protestant I read the Bible, you see, and the Bible will not let me deceive you." M. Laborde was evidently much struck by this new way of reasoning, and listened patiently while Clemence finished up her confession by saying that she had gone to the Protestant worship the day before, and intended in future to do so always. 66 "Well!" said he, your heresy has done you no harm as yet, at any rate. If you continue as good a servant as you have been, I will forgive you. Your head has got a little turned; but a little good advice from the priest will doubtless turn it back again." Clemence could scarcely believe the joyful news which she ran to tell her mistress; and Mademoiselle was grieved and ashamed to think that she should have shown her the way to the honourable course she ought herself to have adopted. She resolved, however, no longer to bring a reproach upon the Gospel by disguising the truth through fear. "I shall probably lose his favour and a great part of his fortune," she said; "but what of that ? " Accordingly, when M. Laborde charged her with the heresy of her maid, in a tone half jocular, she made a bold avowal of all that had passed in her own mind of late, and assured him that she had embraced from conviction, and by God's help would never forego, that faith which it was the desire of her mother she should be brought up in. His anger only equalled his amazement. He represented to her the consequences of her decision in point of fortune in unequivocal terms; but she was firm, and declared that she had already considered it all, and was prepared for the sacrifice of what she valued more-his affection. When M. Laborde had a little recovered from the blow, he could not get rid of the reflection which the conduct of his niece and her maid forced upon him; viz., that the religion which could bring them to give up the comforts and honours of life, and prefer an honourable truth to the deceit by means of which they might have maintained their opinions, keeping them secret from him, must have something very remarkable in it. The end was, that he determined to read the Bible for himself, to see what this religion could be; and having done so, he declared that reason was on the side of Protestan tism, and thenceforward left his niece and Clemence to the free profession of their faith. "Ah, it was a good day," said Clemence to her friend Paul Gélos, "when you drove me from Betharran, and a good day too when I went to hear the preacher, and a good day too when I was not afraid to tell my kind master that I was Protestant; and who can tell but the time is near when he will say that that day was good for him too ? " LEAVES OF CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY, POCHS IN CHURCH HISTORY, ETC. William Wordsworth. BY THE EDITOR. "True to the kindred points of heaven and home."-Wordsworth. CHAPTER III. "EXCURSION."-THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN.THE NATURE'S TEACHING. THE BOOK OF HOLY WRIT.ROMANISM.-APPEAL TO POSTERITY. N the summer of 1814 Wordsworth published the "Excursion." Immediately the wits and critics of the day assailed him. The Edinburgh Review opened upon him a battery of red-hot shot, varied with the shafts which told more effectually the shafts of jest and ridicule. The " Rejected Addresses" added their quota of sarcasm, and the "Lake School" became a byword of reproach. Worst of all, the public took up the impression. However they were attracted by the stately poetry of Southey, or by Coleridge's pleasant dreams, they agreed to consider Wordsworth as a tiresome, moonstricken, moody muser, whose poetry it was a weariness to read. They wished for the poet such a quietus as the witling gave him,"Here lies W. W., Who never more will trouble you, trouble you." But, though the poet was put underground, he refused to die. Confident in his strength, he stood like one of his mountains. "We have crushed the 'Excursion,"" said Jeffrey. "He crush the 'Excursion'!" said Southey; "he might as well try to crush Skiddaw." And the confidence of the poet and his friends was just. The poetry and the mountain are still there, observed and admired; and the verse draws its strength from the streams and valleys, the lights and shadows, the cares and sorrows of that mountain-land. But, however remarkable the poem now appears to us, the attacks of Jeffrey and others prevented it from becoming popular. His first work, "Lyrical Ballads," had by this time reached a fourth edition, but the "Excursion only reached two editions by the year 1833; so that, during sixteen years, there was only a sale of 1,000 copies. The poet, indeed, was undaunted; and, writing to Southey, during the fiercest pelting of the hailstorm of criticism, he says, "Let the age continue to love its own darkness; I shall continue to write, with, I trust, the light of heaven upon me." That the light of heaven did shine on him is, from the evidence of his own writings, increasingly clear. Addressing his daughter in her childhood, he bids her observe the rapid course of the seasons, and fasten her eyes upon the eternity which was near; and then he addresses her in language more distinct; and, without reserve, guides her to the Book of Holy Writ "Which would conduct them To heights more glorious still, and into shades At one time, as we have said, he had thought Nature the great teacher; but the dark mystery of life was too deep for her interpretations. "Without the truths of the Gospel," he remarks in 1829, "our existence is an insupportable mystery to the thinking mind." He found it vain even to enjoy nature without a Divine principle- "By grace Divine, Not otherwise, O Nature, we are thine!" For the brief course that must for me remain, Glad through a perfect love, a faith sincere, from art and antiquity the embellishments of beauty, order, and harmony, yet using these only to encase the pearl, and to hold it up to the admiring eye. To Rome, no claims of antiquity and no pretensions of authority could reconcile him. He regarded her with a stern displeasure. Her attempts to obtain concessions from politicians were firmly withstood by him. He held her to be the inalienable enemy of freedom and progress. He touched with his finger the plague-spots of her system-the celibacy of the priest, which severed him from society; the power of the confessional, which placed the conscience of men under his feet. He saw that no concessions could satisfy her-the enemy of England, until the nation became again her slave; the deadly foe of the Church of England, until she could usurp and fill her place. These opinions of his grew by degrees, and spread over his mind, giving to his poetry that cast of thought by which it is characterized. 66 He never appears to have felt any personal anxiety about the success of his poems : If they are from above, they will do their own work in course of time; if not, they will perish, as they ought." He declined to read or to notice critiques on his poetry. Censure he did not care for, and praise he did not need. He had bidden a young poet think little of the criticism of others, but subject his poetry to careful criticism by himself. He adds-and the reflection, he says, had supported him through life-" that posterity will settle all accounts justly; that works which deserve to last will last; and if undeserving this fate, the sooner they perish the better." This appeal to posterity has not been made in vain. The hasty verdict of prejudiced contemporaries has been reversed by the verdict of the thoughtful few in succeeding ages, who recognise in the poet a genuine painter of the hopes, affections, and fears of man, providing lasting topics, whose interest is inexhaustible. (To be continued.) With these new thoughts he had turned to the Bible, and to the Church of England, its gentle expositor. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets show how he valued her discipline, firm yet mild. He describes her temper as equable; and her services as pure and wise, drawing MISSION WORK AT HOME AND ABROAD. The Dawn of the Light of the Gospel on Western Kerry. BY THE REV. WILLIAM FITZPATRICK, M.A., CLERICAL SECRETARY OF THE IRISH SOCIETY. N the county of Kerry are scenes of beauty and of natural grandeur familiar to most travellers and noted in Guide Books. But there are other parts of that county not so well known, that would repay the visitor, if possessed with a taste for views of mountains, lakes, and sea with wild coast scenery. Killarney, and the road to Glengariff, are annually explored by hundreds from many nations. The Dingle Peninsula has scenery of a different character, but scarcely less enchanting. The want of hotel accommodation closes that interesting region to the majority of tourists. But my object in this paper is not to describe its natural scenery, but to relate the history of a remarkable missionary work, which has imparted to the Christian visitor, as well as to those personally engaged in it, a deep interest in the tract of country extending from Tralee to the Blasquet Islands, and more especially in that part of it which includes and lies westward of Dingle. In the year 1830, the Rev. John Jebb was appointed to the Rectory of Dunurlin, one of the seven parishes which form the Dingle promontory. He is now well known as Dr. Jebb, a Canon of Hereford Cathedral, and for many years a Proctor in Convocation from the diocese of Hereford. He at once set about correcting former neglect: and, with a view to this, appointed a curate to Dunurlin, and, with the consent of the respective rectors, to the three adjoining parishes of Ventry, Kilmalchedar, and Kilquane. None of these parishes had a resident clergyman of the Irish Church. The beneficed clergy had for centuries been non-resident. Mr. Jebb selected Rev. George Gough Gubbins as one who was well adapted for this truly missionary post. It is stated that the popu lation of these parishes at that time amounted to ten thousand, scattered over an area of sixty square miles. Of this population only seventy-three were Protestants, and of these seventy were members of coastguard families, strangers sent, according to the rules of the public service, for temporary residence. There were thus only three individual native resident Protestants. Hence the primary object of the young curate was to minister to the three settlements of the coastguards. His first step was to hire as a residence a poor cottage at a rent of one shilling per week, in the parish of Kilmalchedar. This he did in the month of October, 1831; and with a courage that grace enabled him to exercise, he lived there, on the shore of the Atlantic, and almost outside the borders of civilization. No inclemency of weather now prevented the celebration of the solemn services of the Church, the buildings used being the watchhouses of the several coastguard stations, kindly lent by Captain Bowie, R.N., the then inspector of the coastguards, and commander of the station. Many happy results followed these labours; but the curate felt that the Romanists throughout his district, many thousands in number, were living in darkness, and he longed for the opportunity to bring them to the knowledge of Christ Jesus as He is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. There was, however, one insuperable barrier to any communication between him and them. He was as a "barbarian" (foreigner) to them, and they as barbarians to him, for he understood not the language of the people, who almost without exception spoke only their beloved Irish. In the year 1832, he received a visit from an agent of the Irish Society, who requested him to take the superintendence of some teachers to be employed by the Society in the district. He objected at first, but his objec |