nary method. A larger school is now preparing for this establishment, when the 200 boys will be augmented to 600. There are other schools in the city, at which from 600 to 700 poor catholic boys are educated, by means of a subscription amongst the bishop, clergy, gentry, and opulent tradesmen of their religion. In other parts of Ireland, where there are few or no Catholics of these descriptions, I found that the poorschools were supported by the pence and halfpence collected for this purpose every week by the parish priest.

1

For the education of poor girls. there are two houses in different parts of the city, of the institute founded by my respectable friend, called the Presentation, in each of which there are seven or eight mistresses, who educate gratis as many hundreds of poor children in constant succession for the nature of the institute requires that its members should receive no gratuity whatsoever for their trouble, but should devote themselves during life to the instruction of poor children, from pure motives of charity and reli, gion. There are already five other houses of this new institute; one at Kilkenny, another at Killarney, a third at Waterford, and two others

* How well these ladies succeed in their patriotic as well as pious undertaking, the public has heard from Sir John Carr, who asserts that "the children educated at the Convent of the Presenta“tion at Killarney are universally sought after as servants, by Pro̟"testants as well as by Catholics, on account of their irreproachable # conduct," Stranger in Ireland, p. 384.

in Dublin. Besides these, there are other establishments for the education of poor girls at Tullow, Thurles, Drogheda, and in most parts of Ireland; different in certain respects from the above-mentioned institute, but all having the same meritorious object in view, the gratuitous instruction of poor female children. The members of some of the latest institutes engage in them for a twelvemonth, others for their lives. I found also, in different towns and cities, small communities of single men, of a pious and charitable disposition, who have devoted themselves, but without any permanent engagement, to religious exercises and the education of boys, many hundreds of whom they have constantly in a course of religious, moral, and useful instruction. Some of these good men are possessed of considerable property, which they devote to the same laudable object as they do their persons. I have met with other classes of these associated schoolmasters, who, being otherwise unprovided with the means of supporting themselves, are accustomed to make shoes, or exercise some other handicraft in extra hours, in order to gain just so much as is necessary for their maintenance, while their principal employment is the charitable instruction of poor boys.

poor

I say nothing of the Catholic Orphan and Asylum Houses at Cork and in Dublin, nor of the private schools for the education of the youth of both sexes; but I must not omit to inform you, that in the former of these cities, besides

the two communities of the Presentation, mentioned above, there is also a convent, as it is called, of the Ursuline ladies, an institute which has been long celebrated all over the continent for its method and success in giving a moral, religious, and genteel education to young females. of the higher class. The ladies of Cork have at present about sixty children of that description under their care, whom they instruct in the ornamental as well as the religious branches of education. To accomplish the principal objects they have in view, they conceive it to be as essentially necessary to keep their scholars from the knowledge of some things, as it is to communicate to them information concerning others. In two points they are, with just reason, inexorably rigid; they never permit a novel to enter within their walls, and they never suffer a scholar to go out of them, in order to be present at a theatrical representation. In fact, of what use would their. lessons of filial duty, domestic retiredness, the dread of sin, and the love of God, be to the mind of a pupil who should behold all such virtues held up to contempt in those ensnaring publications of the circulating libraries, and those still more fascinating amusements of the stage? In fact, when does the grave parent appear upon the stage, but in quality of a jealous and avaricious tyrant, who is the enemy of his offspring's happiness? For what end is the serious moralist or Christian introduced there, except to detect him in vice, and expose him as a hypocrite? On the

other hand, is there a character of either sex, brought forward to engage the admiration and affection of the spectators, who is not a model of the fashionable vices of the age, (being precisely those which young people ought to be chiefly armed against) its dissipation, its prodigality, and its irreligion? In vain, Sir, will you attempt to correct the deleterious effects of this subtle poison, by mingling some moral lessons in the cup of vice. The virtues you recommend to us are those which, in this age and country, we are not strongly tempted to violate. On the other hand, the vices which you hold out to our hatred, are such as we before-hand held in abhorrence. In spite of what dramatists and rhyming moralists say, my experience tells me, that the real reformation of my disorderly passions is a work of seriousness and pain, not of amusement and pleasure. In vain do you remind me, that the stage has of late years been chastened, and that the indecencies, which sullied the drama fifty or sixty years ago, are now banished from it. Supposing this were true to the extent you wish me to understand; supposing there were nothing in the plot, nothing in the words, dresses, nothing in the dances,

nothing in the nothing in the

company, either within the doors or without the doors of the theatres, to excite one particular passion, the most difficult of all others to curb and repress, (but, alas! how far are these, suppositions from the truth in each of the instances yet, remember, Sir, there are other passions con

genial to the human breast, which it is equally our duty to fight against, as against the one alluded to*. In a word, Sir, the morality of the theatre is directly the reverse of the morality of the gospel, and in many respects, even of the natural law; and I hereby warn you, Sir, never to complain to me of your children, should they turn out undutiful, or otherwise iinmoral, if you permit them to frequent the playhouse, or even the circulating library.

In concluding this letter, I must not forget to mention, that the ladies of the institute of St. Ursula, at Cork, besides their school for the education of genteel children, take part in the meritorious work of their sisters of the Presentation, by keeping open a poor-school in a different part of their house, where eighty poor catholic girls are instructed by mistresses appointed for this purpose. The present superior of this establishment is sister to my friend the Catholic Bishop of Cork, whose name is held in so much respect by persons of all denominations in both islands.

I am, &c.

There is one vice, in particular, more frequently and severely condemned in scripture than any other, and declared even to be the beginning of all evil, which in the system of dramatic morality, and even in common discourse, has been transferred into the catalogue of virtues, namely, pride. Christians now-a-days are not only proud, but they are constantly professing their pride, and boasting of it! It is unnecessary to shew in what manner the ethics of the stage are directly calculated to excite and augment this immoderate opinion and Jove of our own worth and qualities.