At short intervals, he uttered convulsive shrieks and sobs, or, looking upward, hissed out the sound, "Hush, hush!" in a very peculiar tone: this evidently was a call to the spirit. After a time, the bangles (bracelets) of the goddess were placed on his wrists; he then began to shake his hands violently, and to yell, and after a little while turned round. I observed that his face and arms were daubed here and there with turmeric, and that his eyeballs were turned upward, so that the pupils were invisible. His first query was: Why has the raja [myself] come? "To see you," replied the headman of the village. "That is well." After that he-or, as the natives would say, the goddess through him-talked a good deal about the said raja. At last a man, carrying a sick child, stepped forward, and mentioned the disease under which it was laboring. “I will cure it!" was uttered, and papa went off contented. Some other sick persons appeared, and received similar comfort. The more important ceremony, however, was to come off in the evening; and as I had signified my intention to be present, the villagers arranged everything as comfortably as they could. Till ten or eleven o'clock there was drizzling rain; and soon after, the hurly-burly began. On reaching the spot, I found six or eight musicians with drums, tam-tams, and cymbals. They kept time admirably; and to the sound of their own sweet strains leaped about with the agility and grace of so many giant frogs. The kapoorahle was so long of bedizening himself, that the kohrahle, (petty chief,) in the most disrespectful way, ordered the goddess to appear forthwith; and all the tam-tams gave a ruff that would have awakened the Seven Sleepers. I bore it with heroic patience. In the meantime, we heard, inside the dehwahle, the tinkling of cymbals, and the sounds of other instruments, interrupted now and then by shrieks of maniacal laughter. At last the prophet appeared. On his arms were the inspiring bangles, and in each hand he carried a piece of colored cloth, folded up like a fan; with considerable ingenuity, he had made out of various colored cloths a sort of flounced gown, somewhat like the dress occasionally seen on Malabar women. The upper part of his body was uncovered, and his long hair unbound; the nether integuments consisted of long tight drawers. As he came out, the kohrahle, begging pardon, said that it was very unlucky to remain seated. I explained, that being of another religion, I could not in any way be affected; but he looked so distressed, that I stood up. However, the goddess settled the matter by saying that the raja might sit; and sit he did. The tam-tams now recommenced, and the kapoorahle began dancing, after the native manner, moving in a circle, with sidelong strides advancing his hands, with an undulating snake-like motion of the arm. When a quicker tune was played, he suited himself to the measure, executing a figure not unlike the "one, two, three, and a hop" of dancing-school days. In the height of his antics, the goddess, to my surprise and amusement, called most importunately for beetle, the native substitute for tobacco; and as none was forthcoming, alluded to that creature comfort in terms of marked reprobation of the bystanders. At last a quid was stuffed into her prophet's mouth; and after he had been well rubbed down good cause was there for that-the dancing went on with as great vigor as ever. Occasionally, the man would stop, and looking upward, utter the peculiar hissing sound previously mentioned; and I observed, that however violently the head might be shaken from side to side, it seemed to have no forward or backward motion at all. At one time, an amusing strife arose between the tam-tam beaters and the goddess. According to the figure, the former were to walk backward in a circle, while she constantly advanced toward them; now the musicians declared, that on no account could they turn their backs toward the raja. The goddess remonstrated; and the matter was at last settled by a smaller circle, at some little distance, being formed, and by the tamtam beaters begging pardon each time they passed my chair of state. I sat it out for about two hours, in order to see the swoon at the conclusion, being determined to feel the man's pulse at the time; but learning that the prophet intended to exhibit his activity so long as I remained, I took pity on him, and went off to bed, soon after which the crowd dispersed. I should have observed, that the kapoorahle's whole frame was occasionally convulsed with a curious quivering motion, which it would be extremely difficult to imitate in cold blood. When a kapoorahle dies, it is the demon itself which selects the new prophet. The natives have considerable faith in the responses, although I have heard some of them say with a smile: "Sometimes things happen as was foretold." As to the dancing being involuntary, a good many are somewhat skeptical; yet, when disaster threatens their own families, one and all rush to the dehwahle. A long and painful discussion has being going on for some time in Ceylon, regarding the appointment of persons to manage the land belonging to these demon temples. Government insists upon having a more or less direct influence on these elections, and the opposing party maintains that a Christian government should not have anything to do with such matters. ST. PATRICK-WHO WAS HE? is a common, and a no less great error for its being a common one, to suppose that St. Patrick, or Succathus, as he was originally called, was the first who preached Christianity in Ireland. Indeed his own words in his confession or letter to the Irish-a work universally admitted to be genuine-imply the very contrary. "I went," says he, addressing the Irish, "everywhere on your account, even to the remotest parts of the island, where no one had baptized any before." Hence we may infer that in the more accessible parts of the country Christianity had been preached before the arrival of Patrick; and that "the apostle of Ireland," as he is called, only extended the gospel much more widely than it had been previously.* His name is associated with a thousand Christian monuments throughout all Ireland. His father was probably a Briton, named Calpurnius, a deacon, and the son of a priest or presbyter, Potitus; a plain proof that the doctrine of a celibate clergy was then unknown. His youth was spent in sore trials. Niall, King of Erin, in a ravaging invasion of Britain and Gaul, carried him away into slavery. "At the age of sixteen," writes Patrick himself, "I was made captive and brought into • Mention is made of an Irish missionary, Cathalgus, who went forth to other lands, preaching the gospel, about the end of the second century, and at last settled in Italy, at Tarentum. And Ireland: I was then ignorant of God; but it was there the Lord opened my heart to a sense of my unbelief, and comforted me, as a father doth a child." then he adds this forcible acknowledgment of the wonderful ways in which God's sovereign grace "chooses men in Christ," and, when they are in darkness, "brings them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels prepared for honor." "At first a clown, an exile, illiterate, O how true it is, that before the Lord humbled me I was even as a stone lying in the depth of the mire, and he who alone is able came, and in his mercy lifted me up, and not only lifted me up, but set me on the top of the wall!" After five years' slavery, in which he often endured the extremities of hunger, cold, and nakedness, tending sheep on the sides of a mountain in Antrim, (Sleivmid,) he escaped from captivity. And such was the blessed effect of sanctified affliction to his soul, that, so far from harboring resentment against those who had done him so much wrong, he desired to give back good for evil, and to impart that gospel to his oppressors which had been so blessed to himself. The fact of the opportunity afforded him, during his captivity, of studying the language, habits, and feelings of the Irish, naturally directed his thoughts to them. But his parents and friends affectionately besought him not to leave them again after all the grief they had suffered for him already. Distracted thus between earthly and heavenly impulses, he knew not what to do, until in a dream he saw a man from Ireland named Victoricius, handing a letter thus inscribed: "A voice from the Irish ;" and at the same time he heard a voice of entreaty from the west: "We beseech thee, holy youth, come and walk still among us. This vision, the effect of the natural excitement of his mind on the missionary project he had so much at heart, in God's providence determined him to go. Accordingly, once more he entered the bay of Dundrum, A. D. 432, no longer a slave, but a preacher of the freedom of the gospel. And it is a remarkable fact that his greatest number of conversions (twelve thousand, according to Nennius, a writer in the ninth century) was in that same Connaught, in which at the present day so many thousands are casting off the chains of Romish superstition. One work of his, called "The Three Habitations," still extant, and acknowledged genuine by many Roman Catholic authorities, is positive evidence of his not having held the modern Romish doctrine of purgatory; for there are mentioned but three habitations of man-earth, heaven, hell, and none besides. After having been the honored instrument in God's hand of fixing firmly, if not first planting Christianity in Ireland, he came to a peaceful death at the age of seventy-eight, in March, A. D. 465, and was buried, as some say, in Glastonbury in England, or, as others think, in an obscure grave in the county Down. Ever since, the 17th of March has been kept sacred to his memory, as the day on which he passed to "the rest which remaineth for the people of God.” man. ways on that of Holy Scripture alone. It is an interesting tradition, that the origin of the great respect in which the tional symbol, was the fact that Patrick, in preaching the doctrine of the Trinity to the ignorant people in Ireland, showed under the form of the three leaves joined together, forming one shamrock, how it is equally possible that there should be three persons in one Godhead. He was supposed to be a Scotchman, because he is called Scotus. But it is notorious to every well-informed antiquary, that Bede, and other ancient writers, apply the terms Scoti and Scotia to the Irish and Ireland alone. The learned Mosheim notices the fact, that in the eighth century the Irish were known by the name Scots; and yet he falls into the error of supposing Patrick to be a Scotch-three-leaved shamrock is held as the naAnother greater and more injurious error into which he falls, and which is most widely spread, is, that Patrick was sent to Ireland by Celestine, the pope of that day. This error has had a powerful influence on the Irish, whose character is so strongly marked by the principle of veneration, in making them cling to the religion of Rome, as though it were the same as Patrick preached, and as if he had received his mission to Ireland from the bishop of Rome. By this they are led to regard the Romish religion as invested, through the vista of antiquity, with all the romance of a picturesque and melancholy grandeur, feeling a mournful consolation in turning back from their own wretched condition to the supposed greatness of their forefathers. This is, as the poet Moore in his history happily expresses it, "that retrospective imagination in the Irish, which forever yearns after the past." Patrick, however, was not sent by the bishop of Rome. In his letter to the Irish, already alluded to, he says that the Lord Jesus Christ had sent him to them, and makes no mention of a commission from the pope. He never urges his doctrines on papal authority, but al I shall only mention one more of the extant records of this true servant of God, the genuine hymn of St. Patrick, preserved among the MSS. of Archbishop Usher, in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. As a sample of the beautiful tone of piety which breathes through it, take the following: "At Temor to-day may God's eye view me, God's wisdom instruct me, God's power preserve me!" "May Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ after me, Christ in me. May Christ be in the heart of every person to whom I speak, Christ in the mouth of every one that speaks to me, Christ in every eye that may see me, Christ in every ear that may hear me!" The original is in Irish, but it closes in Latin, thus: "Domini est salus; Christi est salus; salus tua, Domine, sit semper nobiscum!" Every Christian heart will respond, Amen, Amen. MY GROPINGS NINE MILES UNDER GROUND. truly a fit place for the preparation of the death-dealing material. The roof of the vat-house is a lofty dome, called the Ro N the month of September, accompanied tunda. a long-cherished desire by a visit to the celebrated Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, ninety miles south from Louisville. tedious and fatiguing stage-coach journey of eighteen hours brought us to Bell's hotel, a comfortable road-side inn, where the coach deposits passengers for the cave. Mr. Bell, mine host, now descending the hill of life, is well known on the road, and is famed for not having seen the Mammoth Cave, although a thirty years' resident within seven miles of it. A gentleman and his wife from Lexington, Kentucky, were our sole and agreeable companions to the cave. After two hours' jolting in a buggy over a most uncomfortable road, through beautiful, rolling, oak-clad "barrens," we were housed in a good hotel erected for the accommodation of the cave visitors. The most interesting parts of the cave have fanciful designations, derived from the names of various objects to which they A have a rude resemblance, or from some incident in their history. Thus, having passed the first vats, we meet the Cliffs of Kentucky River, which, the Kentuckian informs us, this lamp-lit landscape really resembles. Next appear the Church and Pulpit, where there was at one time regular preaching, and where a sermon is still delivered at times when visitors are many. It is an irregular vault, sixty feet in height. We then pass through the Second Saltpetre Vats, where the cave is wide and lofty, cumbered with hills of stones and saline earth thrown up in the process of lixiviation, and enter the Gothic Gallery. Across this division runs a ledge of the limestone rock projecting from the wall, and from this Gallery, to which we ascend with some little difficulty, we have a peculiar view faintly revealed by the scattered lamps beneath us. Having fortified ourselves with a good dinner as well as coarse woolen jackets and caps, we set out for our first day's excursion underground. Mat, our negro slave guide, with nothing slavish in learning, dress, or language, provided a lamp for each of us, and led us down a steep path into a deep dark ravine. At the bottom appears the Mammoth's Mouth, a wide orifice of very forbidding aspect, to which we descended by rude steps constructed of the loose rocks and earth. On entering, we were met by a flight of bats, numbers of which inhabit the outer parts of the cave. The part immediately within the entrance is comparatively contracted, although about the size of a railway tunnel, and is known by the name of The Narrows. This expands into a more spacious section called the First Saltpetre Vats. Here was an extensive manufactory of saltpetre for gunpowder during the war of 1812-15. It was obtained by lixiviating the fine alluvial earth with which the floor of the cave is deeply covered. The wagon tracks and foot-prints of the oxen employed in the work are still distinctly visible. Lines of wooden pipes, by which the ley was conveyed to the evaporating pans, numerous wooden vats and other erections, show the great extent of the work carried on in this pandemonium As Leaving the main cave here, we turned to the right, into the Gothic Avenue, in which the rocks assume a rude resemblance to Gothic architecture. Here in a niche was found the mummy of a woman. no known tribe of American Indians preserve their dead in this manner, she is believed to have belonged to an extinct race, perhaps to those who raised the numberless mysterious mounds which are scattered over the western states-a numerous people who have left no other history. Rousing himself from the reverie into which the mummy story will probably throw him, the tourist soon reaches the Gothic Chapel, which is well entitled to its name from the massive ribbed pillars and arches formed by the junction of the stalactites from the roof, and the stalagmites from the floor. Descending into a deep cavity called the Lover's Leap, and scrambling through Elbow Crevice, we contemplate the beauties of the Star Chamber, of which some one has truly said that the roof seems to be split open, revealing the vault of the night-heaven spangled with stars. This most beautiful phenomenon is caused by the roof, fifty feet above us, being coated with a black crust, studded with small crystals, which hundred feet—a sharp cone, ribbed like a twinkle in the lamp-light. The Deserted Chamber is memorable as the scene of a curious experiment in the treatment of consumption. The air of the cave being mild, and unaffected by the changes of the season, consumptive patients were to be cured by being buried alive. Houses, which are still standing, were built in the now deserted chamber, and the voluntary immigration to a species of classical Hades duly took place. Through their love of the light, they consented to "remain in darkness as those who had been long dead." Life is sweet, but the result was as might have been anticipated. They enjoyed indeed a mild and equable though damp climate; but then the gloom, the silence, with the wakeful sensitiveness these must have produced, and the constant society of their fellow consumptives, exerted a baneful effect. It was soon found that their situation was too unnatural for healthy influences, and the well-meant scheme was gradually abandoned, "the last man" having persevered for a year without benefit. groined vault, and polished by that persevering architect, water. Picking up a few pebbles as memorials, we returned by the same rat-holes, thoroughly besmeared, but delighted. Our first day's excursion terminated at the Bottomless Pit. This fearful place for a time set bounds to discovery in the cave, completely barring further progress. To look into it, and listen to the booming thunder that rose from an unknown depth when a stone was hurled into it, long deprived the most stout-hearted of their determination to explore. At length a subterranean Columbus crossed it at the second attempt, only escaping destruction by a hairbreadth. His ladder slipped, but a death grip of a projecting rock saved him, and he found himself on the further side. A gangway was soon after thrown across the narrow part of it. It is found to be about one hundred and sixty feet in depth. Several deeper passages have been found opening into it in different directions. Indeed the limestone formation in the vicinity of the Bottomless Pit, (to repeat that awful appellation, so suggestive of a more terrible reality,) and Goran's Dome, is quite honey-combed with caves, above, below, and around. One part of it is worn into the form of a very deep circular draw well, apparently as perfect as plummet and compass can make it. Here, however, as we have said, ended our first day's excursion, and, in miner language, we "went to grass again. We set out anew next morning to penetrate to the extremity of the cave and ex With a heavy sigh for the consumptives, or perhaps to test the soundness of our own lungs, we trudge on again in search | of other wonders. Traversing the Winding Labyrinth, we are abruptly stopped by a wall of rock, in which we perceive an opening like a Gothic window. Within this window is Goran's Dome. Our guide ignites some oiled paper and throws it into the abyss. While thus illuminated, we lean over the window sill, and perceive this grand and beautiful cavity rising one hundred feet above, and sinking as far beneath us. Such places possess an in-plore its various branches. Mat carried a describable attraction, and I could not resist the desire to descend to the bottom if at all practicable. Turning back a few steps, I followed Mat through narrow, rugged, and tortuous crevices, gradually descending to the top of a water-worn pass, only large enough to admit a man's body. This pass may be compared to a chimney stuck round internally with spikes of rock, mud being substituted for soot. It was some thirty feet in depth, and opens into the bottom of the Dome. Scrambling down bear-fashion, we soon reached the bottom, and Goran's majestic dome, illuminated by the lights of our party at the window in mid-distance, towered above us to the height of two can of oil; Albert, another slave of much intelligence, a basket of provisions; and our suite was completed by his wife Helena, a brown woman, cheerful, neat, and rather good looking. We proceed by the main cave, over the ground already described, till we reach the Giant's Coffin, a fallen rock lying near the wall. The coffin hid for thirty years, after the discovery of the cave, the entrance to the parts reserved for this day's excursion. Visitors passed and repassed close by, without dreaming that behind it lay a passage leading to avenues more extensive and remarkable than any yet discovered. Turning sharp behind the Giant's Coffin we descend by a ladder through the steps |