The beginning of his Confessio (to which
perhaps, the English word Profession comes
nearest in sense) is curious: " Ego Patricius,
peccator, rusticissimus et minimus omnium
fidelium, et contemptibillissimus apud plurimos,
patrem habui Calpornium diaconem,"
&c.  It ends thus: " Hæc est Confessio mea,
antequam moriar."

The self-contempt of this exordium was a
matter of form; but elsewhere he says, no
doubt with full sincerity, " I lived in death
and faithlessness, until I was much chastised,
and in truth I was humbled by hunger
and nakedness.  But it was well for me, for
in this God wrought my amendment, and
shaped me to be at this day what was once
far enough from me — that I should care or
strive for the good of others, who then regarded
not even my own good."

These are simple and pious words of the
good bishop, and we may well believe him
not unworthy of his place in the calendar of
saintly men.  Self-denying, humble, fearless,
diligent, religious, in a wide and difficult
field of action; his life was noble, and his
memory is worthy of reverence.  Yet certain
of the rites with which his day
is kept and honoured in Ireland have little
reverence in them.  St. Patrick's Chapel of
Ease, by excise consecration, so crowded today,
is a small, dingy, strong-smelling place,
where, before the wooden altar, over-huddled
with foul glasses and battered pewters, in a
plash of whiskey, the devotees hiccup and
yell the venerable name of their country's
apostle as an incentive to debauchery and
madness.

The tradesman or artisan who six months
ago registered a vow against drinking, formally
excepted the season of the Saint, and,
after an interval of hopeful quiet, his family
are now again to endure the horrors and
miseries inevitably brought on by a drunken
father, or son, or husband, who, for his part,
shall waken to find the path of reformation
vanished from under his foot, and harder to
regain than ever.  The youth, the tender
girl, are half-persuaded, half-forced into their
first visit to a tavern, in honour of the day.
The experienced toper deliberately, and freed
from the last lingering touch of shame (sure
it's Patrick's Day), wallows into the deepest
mire of helpless sottishness.  Quarrels rise;
oaths and foul words, fists and cudgels, in
motion; shrieking wives, weeping sisters and
daughters vainly interfering.  Then come
the efficient green-coated men, truncheons in
hand, who, bursting into the thickest of the
row, haul off sundry torn, bloody, and foaming
creatures, scarcely recognisable as human,
to the lock-up.  Little boys, some of
them not half-a-dozen years old, are made
drunk to-day, on account of Saint Patrick.
See, for example, this wretched Cheevo, to
whom some one has administered a dose that
leaves him collapsed, pallid, and idiotic
against a wall.  Cheevo has not been very
long a street-boy, and perhaps now is his
initiation into the joys of drinking whiskey ;
if so, he had to-day no desire or relish for the
draught that scorched his young lips and
throat ; but, before long, he also will
anxiously crave the burning liquor, and beg
or steal the means of getting it, and under its
influence, perhaps, progress to acts that shall
make him worth Society's attention at last ;
and, while at large, he will certainly not fail
to keep St. Patrick's Day with the most
unscrupulous exactness.

Alas! the good Patricius! practically invoked
as Saint of Sots, Patron of Publicans,
Defender of National Drunkenness !  What
can we say, but that people often use their
saints (alive or dead) unreasonably enough —
and their sinners too ?

WIGHTMOUTH.

WHEREVER is peace, there is no peace at
Wightmouth, by land or sea.  Each time we
visit her, the old place seems to have got
another wrinkle — a fresh lot of military
lines; she has taken to a new set of tremendous
teeth; she is stouter than she was by
several well-defined acres.  The Shopkeeping
nation protects her counter down at Wightmouth
with other than yard-wands.  If the
three-decker vaticinated by the Laureate
should come round under the hill, it would
find a good many playfellows of its own size
opposite Wightmouth.  There are half-a-dozen
such in sight, as I write, and as many
more lying up the harbour; which, in that
case, would have a target provided for them
free of expense.  At present they are compelled
to set up white marks and little flags,
and blaze away at them in a toxophilitish
and harmless manner.  Let us take boat and
see the practice.

Up Wightmouth harbour is a short voyage,
but full of singular contrasts.  Here lies a
graceful yacht at anchor, with delicate raking
masts.  The painters are at work upon her
without, and the carvers and gilders within.
And here rises an ugly hull, with three
great pollarded clothes-props, whence flutter
no flag in the sun.  The heavy boats come and
go about her guarded side in silence, with
their dismal freights of humanity; and, save
for the tread of her sentries, there is little
sound from the convict hulk.  By the dockyard
are moored two vessels not twenty
yards apart, both first-class steam-ships; one
homeward, and one outward bound.  They,
who limp wearily to shore or are carried
upon litters on men's shoulders, are wounded
from the wars; they, who are embarking so
cheerily to the sound of the fife and drum
are going to fill their places in the East.
Here— beside its little friend, the steam-tug
— comes an emigrant vessel, that was
forced to put into Wightmouth for repairs.
She goes to the antipodes; four hundred souls
are on board of her, most of whom will never