the all-sufficient merits of Jesus Christ my Redeemer ; who ever lives to make intercession for me; who is the propitiation for all my sins, and hath washed me from them all in his own blood; who is worthy to receive glory, and honour, and power; who hath created all things, and for whose pleasure they are and were created." For some time he contiuued his address,―blessed his children and those that stood by him in an audible voice, and, after a brief interval, he closed by saying, "I have kept the faith once delivered to the saints ; for the which cause I also suffer these things; but I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day." After this, his speech failing, he uttered but few expressions, and at midnight, on the 7th of February, 1642, he entered the eternal world.

To his own wishes, with respect to his body, consent was obtained, and on the 9th he was interred close by the remains of his wife. It was the most remote and least frequented spot in the churchyard on which he had fixed, desiring that he should be laid next to her, with this modest inscription,-" Depositum Gulielmi quondam Episcopi Kilmorensis."

In his lifetime the natives used to call him " the best of English Bishops;" and "the singular marks of honour and affection which they paid him at his funeral, even in the great heat and fury of the rebellion, do show, from experience, that the Irish may be drawn by the cords of a man, and that gentle usage and Christian treatment will prevail with them, when the contrary methods will not. For they suffered him, although a heretic in their opinion, to be interred in his own burialplace; desiring, if his friends thought fit, that the office proper for that occasion might be used according to the liturgy. Nay, the chief of the rebels, gathering his forces together, accompanied his body to the church

yard with great solemnity, and discharging a volley at the interment, cried out in Latin, Requiescat in pace ultimus Anglorum!" while one of the priests who were present exclaimed, "O sit anima mea cum Bedello !"*

In past ages, there is certainly no man who ought to be held in higher veneration by the Native Irish, than William Bedell. At the commencement of his labours among them, the prospect was such as would have sickened most men, yet his subsequent residence of twelve years was one continued and energetic struggle for their salvation. To say nothing of his singular humility or undaunted courage, his unexampled disinterestedness in regard to his own income, or his generous hospitality to the poor and needy; never let them forget that he felt bound to their best interests by an indissoluble tie, so that when even an English bishopric was offered to him, he refused it! But, above all, let his pleadings in high places, in that early day, on their behalf, and his unwearied exertions, at an advanced age, in procuring for them the book of God in their long-proscribed language, be cherished with grateful remembrance. These render him the brightest star which ever rose on the gloom of their sorrow.†

* Richardson's History, &c. pp. 23, 24.

Of these,

+ His immediate successors will here very naturally be inquired for. however, we can say but little, and literally nothing as it regards Bedell's favourite and truly Christian views with reference to the Native Irish. These successors were Maxwell and H. Marsh, Sheridan and Smith; but until the time of Wetenhall, in 1710, the object was not regarded by any incumbent of Kilmore. Robert Maxwell, son of the Dean of Armagh, was appointed in 1643, and the see of Ardagh, which Bedel had renounced, having also become vacant by the death of Richardson, Maxwell accepted it. He is mentioned as having been a lineal descendant of one of the Magnates Scotia in 1258, Aymer de Macceswell, and this he might be ; but into the designs of Bedell respecting the Scoti of Ireland he certainly did not enter. Here he remained for twenty-nine years, when, in 1672, H. Marsh, Bishop of Limerick, succeeded. After Marsh's promotion, in 1681, William Sheriden was appointed, whose father has been already noticed as aiding Bedell in the translation; but the son does not appear to have sympathized with the views of either. The manuscript was probably for years in his possession, as some time before his promotion he had delivered it to Jones, Bishop of Meath. In 1693 Wil

Yes, the period after Bedell's death was indeed in every sense gloomy. He was taken away from the evil to come, and it is marvellous that his translation was preserved, as by far the largest proportion of his papers and books were lost or destroyed. Not one step, however, was taken either in printing his manuscript of the Old Testament, or reprinting the New, for about forty years. Nay, the Irish types which had been sent over by Elizabeth, and used for printing the New Testament, after passing from the hands of one King's printer to another, owing to the cupidity of one party into whose possession they had come, were secured by the Jesuits, and by them carried over to Douay, for the express purpose of promoting their own views in Ireland through the medium of the Irish language. Not a type remained in existence for printing any thing; but thirty years afterwards foreign productions were visible in Ireland, executed, I have no doubt, by means of these very materials. In this, however, the Jesuits are not so much to be censured as the party who sold them. Their conduct was a proof of their sagacity, and affords not a hint only, but a lesson of instruction even to the present generation. Before these types were carried away, they were employed in one publication during the time of the Commonwealth. It is a Catechism of some size, with Scripture proofs, all in Irish, printed at Dublin in 1652 by Godfrey Daniel, with rules for reading the Irish tongue, which, though brief, were considered to be excellent.

liam Smith succeeded; but still it was not till his successor, in 1699, had been bishop for eleven years, that we find the incumbent of Kilmore following up the views of Bedell. This was Wetenhall, nearly seventy years after the decease of his indefa. tigable predecessor-though he also failed in his attempt. See the third section, anno 1710.

But now, after such long and miserable delay as that which we shall have occasion to expose; at Kilmore especially, one should think that, in the recollection of Bedell's character, principles, and exertions, any incumbent might imagine "the stone to cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber to answer it.”

Thus, after types had been procured in 1571, the only purposes to which they had been applied, with the exception of Kearney's Catechism, were one edition of the New Testament in 1603, another of the Prayer-Book six years later, and this Catechism in 1652. In other words, though the materials for printing had been furnished, here is the amount of all that was done in Ireland, (for in Britain there was nothing done,) towards furnishing the Native Irish with the knowledge of divine truth through means of the press, during a period of one hundred and ten years, from 1571 to 1681, when the attention of a few eminent men was drawn to the subject.

In tracing, however, the symptoms and progress of some reviving, though transient interest, on behalf of this much-neglected people, towards the close of the seventeenth century, we are irresistibly drawn to the admiration of one distinguished character. Other individuals lent their needful aid and influence; but, without him, it seems almost certain that there had been no edition of the Irish New Testament from 1603 to the year 1813! nor any edition whatever of the Old until the present day! The reader therefore may well excuse some previous notice of one, who, though not what is called a Native Irishman, was born in Ireland, and continued through life to feel so deep an interest in the aborigines.

The Honourable Robert Boyle was the seventh son and fourteenth child of the first Earl of Cork. Born the same year in which Lord Bacon died, it was left for him to succeed to his genius and inquiries, so that the one has been styled the student, the other the interpreter of Nature. "Boyle's valuable experiments," it has been lately said, "in various branches of science, show that he had deeply imbibed the spirit of his great master's system; and, independently of his discoveries and improvements, they constitute a most important addition to what Bacon had so loudly called on philosophers to

labour at attaining, namely, a more extensive and accurate history of nature." But still, however much he was indebted to his predecessor, and no man could admire him more,—as to Mr Boyle's pursuits, it must be remembered, that even these delightful studies he by no means regarded as his chief felicity. When the poor Native Irish come to bless his memory, and that day will come, let them not forget that all his generous sympathy for them sprung from a fountain of tenderness, opened in his heart in consequence of his profound veneration for God himself. He was indeed a philosopher,- -a lover of wisdom, and that chiefly because in him this love proceeded from the love of God, and was nourished by his habitual esteem for his most holy word. This was the theme on which he delighted to expatiate, and which, notwithstanding the occasional peculiarities of his style, lent to his expressions true sublimity of thought. Perhaps more familiar with nature than any man of his time, he had a pleasure in it, as a field for enlightened induction, equal to any who have explored it since ; yet all this familiarity with physical science was rendered doubly sweet, in consequence of far higher satisfaction in the inspired explanation of the secrets of wisdom. Here it was that Mr Boyle occasionally felt at a loss for expression, descriptive of his interest and enjoyment. While his philosophical writings abundantly evidence his delight in studying the works of God; when he turned to his ways, and especially to the Divine Being himself, it was then that he found solid satisfaction, or, to use his own expression, then that he cast anchor and ceased roving. Though the pleasure of making physical discoveries," says he, "is in itself very great, yet this does a little impair it, that the same attempts which afford that delight, do so frequently beget both anxious doubt and a disquieting curiosity: So that if knowledge be, as some philosophers have styled it, the aliment of the rational soul, I fear I may truly say, that the na

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