CHAPTER X.
THE RECTOR OF DRUMBARROW AND HIS WIFE.
Herbert Fitzgerald, in speaking of the Rev.Aeneas Townsend to Lady Clara Desmond, had said that in his opinion the reverend gentleman was a good man, but a bad clergyman.

But there were not a few in the county Cork who would have said just the reverse, and declared him to be a bad man, but a good clergyman.

There were others, indeed, who knew him well, who would have declared him to be perfect in both respects, and others again who thought him in both respects to be very bad.

Amidst these great diversities of opinion I will venture on none of my own, but will attempt to describe him.
In Ireland stanch Protestantism consists too much in a hatred of Papistry--in that rather than in a hatred of those errors against which we Protestants are supposed to protest.

Hence the cross--which should, I presume, be the emblem of salvation to us all--creates a feeling of dismay and often of disgust instead of love and reverence; and the very name of a saint savours in Irish Protestant ears of idolatry, although Irish Protestants on every Sunday profess to believe in a communion of such.