ved it was God's
doing. If God wished the people should be stirred up to fight, then
it was all right they should do it; and if He didn't will, why
surely then there would be no fighting at all. I am not sure it
could have been expressed better. I have heard horrid stories in
detail of the famine. They are getting historical now, and the
people can look back at them and tell them quietly. It is very lucky
for us that we are let to get off for the most part with
generalities, and the knowledge of details is left to those who
suffer them. I think if it was not so we should all go mad or shoot
ourselves.

"The echoes of English politics which come over here are very
sickening: even The Spectator exasperates me with its d--d cold-
water cure for all enthusiasm. When I see these beautiful mountain
glens, I quite long to build myself a little den in the middle of
them, and say good-bye to the world, with all its lies and its
selfishness, till other times. I have still one great consolation
here, and that is the rage and fury of the sqireens at the poor
rates; six and sixpence in the pound with an estate mortgaged right
up to high-water mark and the year's income anticipated is not the
very most delightful prospect possible.

"The crows are very fat and very plenty. They sit on the roadside
and look at you with a kind of right of property. There are no
beggars--at least, professional ones. They were all starved-dead,
gone where at least I suppose the means of subsistence will be found
for them. There is no begging or starving, I believe, in the two
divisions of Kingdom Come. I see in The Spectator the undergraduates
were energetically loyal at Commemoration--nice boys--and the dons
have been snubbed about Guizot. Is there a chance for M---? Poor
fellow, he is craving to be married, and ceteris paribus I suppose
humanity allows it to be a claim, though John Mill doesn't. My
wedding party have not arrived. It is impossible not to feel a
kindly interest in them. At the bottom of all the agitation a
wedding sets going in us all there is lying, I think a kind of
misgiving, a secret pity for the fate of the poor rose which is
picked now and must forthwith wither; and our boisterous
jollification is but an awkward barely successful effort at
concealing it. Well, good-bye. I hardly know when I look over
these pages whether to wish you to get them or not.

"Yours notwithstanding,
"J.A.F."

Ireland had been devastated, far more