About the year 1830, I believe, my father was
appointed what was called a Reader of the Cathedral
Church of Kilkenny, St. Canice, the patron saint of
the ancient city. The Cathedral, though not large,
is of great beauty, and has witnessed stirring events
in Irish history. It was a place of meeting, I have
said, of the Parliaments of the Pale and of the
Catholic Confederates of Charles I. ; and it was in-
jured, defaced, and turned into a stable by the fierce
Puritan troopers of Cromwell. When I first remember
it, it had the neglected aspect, the squalor, and the
look of meanness and decay characteristic of almost
all churches, especially in Ireland, in the first part of
this century. The fine painted windows had long
disappeared, the walls of the building were thick with
whitewash, the hideous monuments of the age of the
first Georges marred the lines, in many places, of the
majestic edifice. The interior of the church was
boxed up with the frightful square pews of the
eighteenth century, the organ was cracked, and the
choir voiceless, and the services were a round of
lethargic dulness. There was a significant feature,
too, of the place which attracted my attention even
in boyhood. The nave of St. Canice was full of



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 29

monuments in the admirable style of mediaeval piety,
noble knights and ladies of high degree recumbent
in carved stone on the graves which held them. With
scarcely an "exception, these ancient names, Le Gros,
Comerford, Walsh, and many others, those of the
Norman settlers of the adjoining tract, have sunk into
the ranks of the peasantry, their lands torn from them
by confiscation and rapine, and still held by the de-
scendants of a new race of owners. Here again we
approach the Irish question. Let me add that St.
