A few more particulars of this original character may, not improperly, be introduced here. In January, 1787, having come to Dublin after two years' absence, I saw him walking through the streets with a long gray beard, like that of an old Turk or Rabbi. On inquiry, I found he had appeared in that trim some time before in a coffee-house, when the people gathering about him, asked him why he wore the long beard? He replied gravely, he would not shave his beard till he had paid his debts, having failed in the year 1785. Soon after his failure, on a meeting of his creditors at his house, they asked him how he could account for the great deficiency in his affairs? On which he called for the Bible, that he might reply Scripturally, and read to them the first verse of the thirtieth chapter of Job in a grave solemn voice; "But now they that are younger than I, have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock." This is the only answer he would give them. When one of them a Mr. Lsaid to him, "These are two handsome pistols over the fire side."-" Yes they are," he replied. Then taking them down, he put one into his hand, and kept the other to himself, and said to him, "Will you take a shot?" Which made Mr. L-run out of the house in dread of his life. Thus did he settle accounts with his creditors.

Some time after my return to the country I received a letter from a friend in Dublin, a man of real original humour, informing me, that Mr. B-, who had so often changed his religions before, had now at last turned Papist. He enclosed me B-'s apology to the public for so doing, with his name annexed. It was printed and spread through Dublin to justify his character, which was maliciously attacked by some evil-minded persons. In this he candidly owns that he had adopted at different times the religious opinions of almost every species of Protestants. On his becoming a Papist he shaved his beard, and resumed his usual appearance; on which my friend's little nephew, who heard him declaring in the coffee-house he would not shave his beard till he had paid his debts, came running up to him one day with joy in his face, and said, "Uncle! uncle! B- has paid his debts, for I see him walking through the streets without the beard."

Having been drawn naturally into this short digression, I return now to the course of my narrative.

In 1782, Mr. Skelton was deprived by death of his old friend and patron the bishop of Clogher, who lived until he was above ninety; so long did it please God to bless the world with this good bishop, who, to the honour of his country, was born in England. He had the satisfaction of having promoted some worthy men of great merit, but little interest; among whom, beside Mr. Skelton, is Dr. Thomas Campbell, who has paid a just tribute of praise to him in the Philosophical Survey of Ireland. The bishop was a pious, humble, good-natured man, a generous encourager of literature, kind to his domestics, and justly esteemed by all those who had an opportunity of knowing his virtues.

This same year produced also another event, which af fected Mr. Skelton even more sensibly than the death of his good friend the bishop of Clogher. It being uncommonly wet and cold both in seed-time and summer, the poor scanty crop, that escaped from the inclemency of the weather, was not fit to be cut down until the winter approached, and then it was mostly destroyed by the rain. Mr. Skelton foresaw, with many others, that a dearth would be the consequence of all this, and endeavoured, like the patriarch of Egypt, to provide against this calamity. In the winter he first sent a large sum of his own to Drogheda to buy oatmeal for his poor, and then applied, as usual, to those who had landed property in the parish; all of whom contributed except a Mr. D-, who holds a bishop's lease. With these contributions, and an additional sum of bis own, he bought more meal at Drogheda, where the whole was stored during the winter, in order to be conveyed in certain portions to his parish, when the dearth should require it. He was not deceived in his apprehensions. The famine that prevailed in the summer of 1783, was the most severe that even history records to have taken place in Ireland. The poor in many parts must have died of hunger, had they not been relieved by the liberal donations of those whom Providence blessed with riches. While the famine was advancing towards its height, Mr. John Latouche carried a message to Mr. Skelton from his father to this effect, that if he wanted money to buy meal for his poor, he might

draw on his bank for any sum he stood in need of, which he would willingly bestow for so good a purpose. Mr. Skelton, who had never seen the good old gentleman, being surprised at this uncommon liberality, replied, that he was very grateful for his kind offer, but that he had sufficient to keep his poor alive without taking money from him, who employed his wealth in doing good. The generosity of this truly charitable man, who is now gone to reap the fruits of his labours, and of his worthy family, whose purses have been always open to relieve the distressed, is sufficiently known in this kingdom without any commendation of mine.

Mr. Skelton, during this dearth, intrusted the distribution of the meal to his curate Mr. Auchinleck, who assured me, that this good clergyman laid out on it, beside the contribution of others, 2001 of his own. At dinner he used to say to us, I cannot suffer my poor parishioners to starve in hard times, for they have fed me on good fare these many years past. His first toast now after dinner was the family of the Latouches, who had souls, he said, of a superior nature to the generality of men. His next was Richmond the dancing-master, which he usually prefaced with these words; "I give you the health of a hero, Richmond the dancing-master." He then told us of the noble exploits performed by this brave old man, a short account of which I transcribe from his Senilia.

"One night, after his seventy-fifth year, having read prayers with his family, he heard, as he was going to bed, a loud cry of murder in a female voice, repeated from a house, not far from his own, in Prince's-street, Dublin. This hurried him down to his parlour with a case of pistols in his hands, followed by his daughter. The cry still continuing, he opened a window, but it was too dark without to see any thing. Having a providential apprehension for his daughter, though none for himself, he had just time to push her from the window behind the adjoining pier, when one of the robbers, of whom there were six, fired on him, and the ball passed through the place where his daughter stood. Richmond, by the light of the villain's discharge, shot him dead. He and a brave servant-boy of his then sallied into the street, where perceiving by the woman's cries that the rest of the gang had got into the house of a neighbour con

fined to his bed by sickness, and were by repeated wounds murdering the servant-maid, he, his boy, and some of the watch then coming to his assistance, soon cleared the house, fought the gang in the street, knocked one of them down with a clubbed pistol, pursued the rest, and took two of them, whom he lodged in Newgate, before he returned to his terrified family. The prisoners he afterward prosecuted to the gallows. It was but too plain, this was the first time the brave man had been concerned in blood. It was but with difficulty that the minister of his parish could prevent his sinking under the grief of having sent a fellow-creature into eternity with a load of guilt on his head. Some time after, this undaunted man going homeward at night, found a servant-boy crying in the street, who had been just then robbed by three footpads of a tankard, which he had been sent out with for some drink. These Richmond instantly pursued into a close back-yard, being joined by a stranger of a spirit like his own. They were fired upon by the vil lains, but they took too of them and afterward had them convicted and executed. It has been said, that my hero acquitted himself with similar honour in a third adventure with robbers, the particulars of which I am not acquainted with."

If Richmond had lived in heroic ages, he would have been crowned with laurel, he said, as a public benefactor of mankind; and then accused this country of ingratitude for not rewarding his useful services. The duke of Rutland, during his lieutenancy, once met Mr. Richmond in the park, and asked him, if he were the person mentioned by Mr. Skelton in his last volume? He answered he was. His grace then promised to provide for him, but died before he was able to effect it.

A few months before the dearth already mentioned, a young man from Fintona, who was then a journeyman apothecary in Dublin, being attacked by a violent disorder, Mr. Skelton paid a nurse half a guinea a week to take care of him, and employed a physician to visit him twice a day. When he grew a little better, he sent him to Fintona for the advantage of his native air, and on his return to Dublin had a place provided for him. His father, who was then dead, had been a great favourite with Mr. Skelton, as he

dealt extensively in linen-yarn, and was thus very useful to the industrious poor at Fintona.

While he was employed in supplying the wants of his indigent parishioners, he had an interview, in May of the same year (1783), with the late missionary Mr. Wesley, who was then also engaged in his work of charity. This being their first meeting, they had no religious altercation. A few days after, Mr. Wesley paid him a second visit, and on the evening of the same day I happened to visit him. He informed me then, that that gentleman had been with him in the morning, and told him something which he thought a little extraordinary. A woman had come over to him from England, he said, who was plagued with a strange disorder in her belly; on which, being pressed to speak plainly and tell her complaint, he owned, after some hesitation, that it was the devil, she said, she had got in her belly, and had applied for cure to many Protestant bishops, Popish priests, and Presbyterian teachers, but all to no purpose. "What will you do then?" he asked him. "I expect," he replied, "to cure her by prayer and fasting, and the like."" Take care, Mr. Wesley," he remarked, "of what you are about; you want, I perceive, to support your new religion by the force of miracles; but if you once set up for working miracles, the people will flock to you from all quarters, they will meet you in the streets and highways, as they did our Saviour, and perhaps they may take you short; so that you may lose more than you'll gain by pretending to work miracles." He could not swallow Mr. Wesley's story about the woman with the devil in her belly, and this gentleman thought it better to send her home to her own country, without attempting to take the devil out of her.

However, if we can believe what he tells us in his journals, he has been very successful in effecting some cures of this sort. He went once, as he informs us,* to see a woman in a melancholy state, and when he came to her, boldly asked the devil how he dare enter into a Christian? On which the devil spoke thus to him out of her belly," She is not a Christian, she is mine." But Mr. W., it seems, soon forced the intruder to shift his quarters,

3d Journ. p. 95.