money is to be given to her priests, seeing what an abundance of money, and good things purchased by money, have done for the Irish Protestant Church. It has become slow as it has become fat. Stuff even a pulpit-cushion with bank-notes, and it is strange to see how religion will sleep upon it. And therefore people ought to rejoice that the Catholic is to be made a little comfortable in worldly matters! Excellent, worthy Churchmen, who can command the sports of the field and all the pleasures of the table, are not the busy, troublesome folks to go about converting their benighted neighbours! And though the Maynooth pupils may not-like their beneficed rivals-keep fox-hounds, and enjoy the dearest turtle, pineapples, and all that, they will not, I think, be in after-life more dangerous to the Protestant Church, because when at college they slept not more than two in a bed.

But there's a sort of people in the world that can't bear making any progress. I wonder they even walk, unless they walk backwards! I wonder they don't refuse to go out when there's a full moon, and all out of love and respect for that "ancient institution," the old one. But there always were such people, grandmother—always will be. When lucifers first came in, how many old women, stanch old souls-many of 'em worthy

to be members of Parliament-stood by their matches and tinder-boxes, and cried out "No surrender!" And how many of these old women, disguised in male attire, every day go about at public meetings professing to be ready to die for any tinder-box question that may come up! Yes, ready, quite ready to die for it; all the readier, perhaps, because dying for anything of the sort's quite gone out of fashion.

Even Sir James Graham says the time is gone by for ill-using Ireland. "The time is gone by! And yet how many men before Sir James, have stood up and declared their time-the time "gone by" was the best time possible for Ireland, that what was doing for her could not be improved; and having thundered this, have sat down, secure in a majority that has voted for the evil to continue! What a long time it is before men in power will learn to call things by their proper names! What a time it takes to teach ministers to call evil, evil -and lies, lies!

Sir Robert Peel has manner in the matter.

behaved in the handsomest

He says it is by no means his wish to rob the Whigs of the gratitude of Ireland for the Maynooth measure. Certainly not: they, no doubt, could have carried it had he joined them; this, however, he would not do: he has, however, no objection that they should join

him. And so they may have the gratitude, and he the patronage and power. They have helped him to open the oyster; he swallows the fish, and they are quite welcome to the shells.

It is quite a delight to read Sir Robert's Parliament speeches. Did you ever talk to a man who seemed never to hear what you said, but only thought what he should say to pass for an answer? who seemed as though none of your words entered his ears, but all slid down his cheeks? I've met with such people, and Sir Robert Peel— when I read his Maynooth speeches-does remind me of 'em. What a way he has of talking down the side of a speech, and never answering it direct! I hardly wonder that the playhouses don't flourish, when there's such capital actors of all sorts in the Houses of Parliament. I had just been reading an account of two or three more Maynooth meetings, where some of the speakers talked about the true and the false religion, as though themselves had a sole and certain knowledge of what was truewhat false I had just been reading all this, when my eye fell upon a paragraph headed "Lord Rosse's Telescope." Lord Rosse, you must know, is one of those noblemen who do not pull off knockers, knock down cabmen, and always take a front seat at the Old Bailey on a trial for murder. No: he has been making an enormous telescope;

and the paragraph I write of says: Marvellous rumours are afloat respecting the astronomical discoveries made by Lord Rosse's monster telescope. It is said that Regulus, instead of being a sphere, is ascertained to be a disc; and stranger still, that the nebula in the belt of Orion is a universal system-a sun with planets moving round it, as the earth and her fellow-orbs move round our glorious luminary."

Now, at one time, a man might have been burnt alive for taking it upon himself to say that Regulus was not a sphere but a disc; and that Orion (I know nothing about him, save and except that a marvellously fine poem, price one farthing, was lately published with his name) did not wear in his belt any nebula, but a universal system La, grandmother! when I read of these things, I feel a mixture of pain and pity for men that, instead of having their hearts and spirits tuned by the harmony that God is always playing to them (and they won't hear it, the leathern-eared sinners!) think of nothing but swearing that one thing's a disc, and the other a nebula-when they only look through small glasses, wanting the great telescope to show 'em the real truth-And so no more from your affectionate grandson,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG,

P.S.I blush for myself, that I had almost forgotten to tell you that Dr Wolff has come back safe and sound from the innermost part of India, where he went to try to save the lives of two Englishmen, Stoddart and Conolly. It was like going into a tiger's den to take the flesh from the wild beast. And yet the stout-hearted man went! Such an act makes us forget the meanness and folly of a whole generation! Captain Grover-a heart of gold that—has published a book on the matter called "The Bokhara Victims." As no doubt the New York publishers-in their anxiety to diffuse knowledge-have already published it for some five cents, do not fail to read it. As for Dr Wolff, I wonder what Englishmen will do for him? If he'd come back from India after cutting twenty thousand throats, why, he might have had a round of dinners, diamond-hilted swords, winecoolers as big as buckets, and so on; as it is, I fear nothing can be done for him. However, we shall see.

LETTER XIV.-To Mrs Hedgehog of New York.

DEAR GRANDMOTHER,-England's still above water the sea doesn't yet roll over Dover cliffs;