Hence it appears, that his lordship made his promise with a fixed determination to break it. He expected from Mr. Douglas's state of health that the living of Monaghan would soon be vacant, and he was resolved in his mind to give it to his nephew, but he wished to have Skelton to assist him, and feared lest his leaving the diocess in displeasure, might bring censure on himself; he therefore fixed on the scheme of sending a divine with a promise which he never intended to perform. Every circumstance relative to this affair I mention upon the authority of Mr. Skelton himself, from whom I have heard it above twenty times. Mr. Hawkshaw, who is still alive, is a gentleman of too much honour to deny it. Yet it is but justice to own, that no blame can be laid to him. Possibly he did not know of the bishop's engagement with Mr. Skelton; or if he did, where is the man that in such a case would refuse a good living when it is offered to him? But by his conduct afterward to Mr. Skelton it appears that he thought him injured, or at least well worthy of a higher station in the church, for he treated him with singular respect and esteem.

Mr. Skelton did not bear his lordship's breach of promise with remarkable temper. He expressed his resentment with great plainness. "God forgive me," he used to say, "I railed against him most violently, but he did not regard it; his station placed him far above me, and what did he care for the censure of a poor curate?" He never attended a visitation during the remainder of his lordship's life, which continued for a series of years. The bishop never asked for him, nor seemed surprised at his absence, for his own breast told him the cause of it. After his promise to him he disposed of many livings without offering him one of them. "I saw then," said Skelton, "sorry fellows, time after time, put over my head, but I could not mend myself, though it vexed me more than it ought." It appears that the sense of his injury had some effect on his patience. He was then a young man; his temper was warm, his notion of honour just and pure; he expected that the conduct of so dignified a personage as a bishop should be regulated by the same principles as his own. His disappointment in this particular, especially as it touched

bim so closely, made him express his resentment against the person that deceived him. All this was the natural and excusable effect of the injury which he had sustained.

The respect which Mr. Hawkshaw entertained for Mr. Skelton, his curate, was shewn when he first obtained the living. He said to him, "Sir, I am but a very young man, and you are fit to direct me; give me your advice, and I'll do whatever you desire me." This shewed him to be a young man of a noble and ingenuous disposition, which he displayed in the whole of his subsequent conduct towards Mr. Skelton. Under such a rector, he must have been as happy as the condition of a curate, situated as he was, could admit.

Mr. Hawkshaw, who was himself scrupulously attentive to his duty, told me, that Mr. Skelton gave him the clearest ideas of the duty of a clergyman that could possibly be conceived. He was often forced, he said, to contrive secretly to attend the sick, as Mr. Skelton would be angry at him if he would not let him go himself; a noble emulation between a rector and a curate!

Though Mr. Skelton strove to act so consistently with the character of a clergyman, yet he could not escape the censure of a sour fanatic. One John Porter, a presbyterian churchwarden, coming in upon him on a Sunday morning, when he happened to be shaving himself, seemed surprised, and told him it was a shame for one of his profession to shew such a bad example. "Well, John," said he, "if you think it is your duty, present me."-" I believe I will," he replied. At the visitation, he asked the bishop, if a clergyman could be presented for shaving himself on a Sunday? The bishop said he thought not; this made John stop his proceedings.

However, he was actually presented to the bishop for abusing a Mr. Wrightsome at a vestry, where parishioners usually display their eloquence. A vestry being held at Monaghan a short time before to bring an overseer to an account, who had the management of some repairs in the church, Wrightsome (who formerly lent him the horse) openly insulted him there before all the people. Skelton then told him, shaking his fist at him out of the readingdesk, that if he had him out of that place he would chastise

him for his insolence. This gave rise to the charge laid against him, which set forth, "that he was a wrangling, bullying clergyman, and a dangerous man to deal with, as he would readily strike any one who seemed offensive to him." The bishop disregarded their accusation, which was drawn up by one Little, who was rebuked by Mr. Skelton and Mr. Hawkshaw for his lewd pleasures. The common report is, that he leaped out of the reading-desk, and beat Wrightsome in the aisle. But a person of veracity who was present assured me, that he only threatened him in the manner I have mentioned.

At another vestry he was almost involved in a serious quarrel with a major of the army. The major having affronted him there, as he thought, when he came out of the church, he threw off his gown, and challenged him to fight him; "but the major," he remarked to us in conversation, "though he was one of the bravest men on earth, treated me with contempt; for he scorned to fight a clergyman." He thus candidly allowed him his merit. He always spoke with horror of his conduct on that occasion, and begged God's pardon, pleading as an excuse the violence of passion, which hastily incensed him to give the challenge. For in his serious and sober days he had an utter aversion to duelling, which he considered as sacrificing one's soul at the shrine of false honour.

He related a curious remark of Swift's upon an affair of honour of this nature. A friend came one morning to see the Dean in Dublin. The Dean bade him sit down. "No," he replied, "I cannot stay, I must go immediately to the park, to prevent two gentlemen from fighting a duel."-"Sit down, sit down," said the Dean, "you must not stir, let them fight it out, it would be better for the world that all such fellows should kill one another."

The strict attention that Mr. Skelton paid to the duties of his profession prevented his being engaged in the softer concerns of human life. I question if he ever was deeply in love, though it is certain that he made some advances in the passion. He seems indeed to have been proof against the fascinating charms of the fair, whose gentle weapons have conquered the greatest heroes and philosophers, and made them submit to their yoke. Monaghan was the

scene of his attempts in love, and possibly a short account of these may not be unentertaining to my readers.

He was once courting a young lady, and when they were just on the point of being married, she said to him one day, "My dear, as you are but a poor curate, how will you provide for our children?"-" Why, my love," he answered, "suppose we have three sons, I'll make one of them a weaver, another a tailor, and the third a shoemaker, very honest trades, my jewel, and thus they may earn their bread by their industry."-" Oh!" she replied, "never will I bring forth children for such mean occupations."-" Well then," said he, "I have no other expectations, and of consequence you and I will not be joined together, for between your pride and his poverty poor Phil. Skelton will never be racked." Thus the match was broke off. Soon after this one S** S**, a fine fellow with a gold-laced waistcoat paid his addresses to the young lady, who was so much captivated with his appearance, and especially with the waistcoat, that she instantly married him without once inquiring how he would provide for her children. However, they lived very unhappily; he starved her, and she in turn was guilty both of drunkenness and adultery. Skelton often thanked God he did not marry her, observing that he had a fortunate escape, for she would surely have broken his heart. If she had married him, he said, she would have got rough plenty; but she preferred the man with the gold-laced waistcoat, and was thus deceived by outward show.

He paid his addresses once, he told me, to a young lady, who, in her conversation with him, began to talk boastingly of her great family, saying what grand relations she had, and the like. "Upon this," he remarked to me, "I found she would not answer for a wife to me; because she would despise me on account of my family, as my father was only a plain countryman, and therefore I thought it best to discontinue my addresses for the future."

Again, he was courting another young lady, and was just going to be married to her; when happening to find a gay airy young fellow in a private room with her, he, in his rage, took the beau with one of his hands and held him up

before her, as you would a puppet, then carrying him to the stairs, let him drop. When he had thus punished the gentleman, he broke off from the lady in a passion, and would never visit her again in the character of a lover. His brother Thomas strove to dissuade him from this resolution, telling him he ought to think the more of the young lady for having many admirers. But his advice did not avail, as he observed, that if she were fond of him, she would have no familiar intercourse with another.

He seemed indeed once to have had an ardent passion for a Miss Richardson, for in his eagerness to see her, he rode across the lake of Coothill in the great frost, without perceiving he was riding on ice. However, we may suppose his fondness soon began to cool. His situation of curate, I should think, made him cautious of plunging too deep into love. He knew that marriage must have confined him still more in his charities, which were always nearest to his heart; unless he could get a good fortune by it, a boon seldom conferred on one of his station. He therefore strove to keep down his passions by abstinence, and lived for two years at Monaghan entirely on vegetables. I was told indeed that he would once have been married to a young lady, had he not been disappointed of a living that was promised to him. He had however pure and refined notions of love; nor did he, like some others, affect to ridicule that gentle passion. He thought it cruel of a parent obstinately to thwart the affections of a child; unless there was a glaring impropriety in the choice. "Poor things (he used to say of two lovers), since they love one another, they should let them come together, it is a pity to keep them asunder."

In 1741, he published the Necessity of Tillage and Granaries, in a letter to a member of parliament. The art of cultivating the ground, next to the care of our souls, is certainly the most useful to man. Consequently, any piece of writing, which has agriculture for its object, is worthy of attention. The estate of the member of parlia ment, to whom this letter is addressed, lay in the south of Ireland, though of a soil admirably fit for tillage, by a pernicious sort of management, was applied almost entirely to grazing; and its condition is yet too much in need of im