retchedness engendered by cholera, of which in London alone, an
infinitely larger number of English people than are likely to be slain
in the whole Russian war have miserably and needlessly died--I feel as
if the world had been pushed back five hundred years. If you are reading
new books just now, I think you will be interested with a controversy
between Whewell and Brewster, on the question of the shining orbs about
us being inhabited or no. Whewell's book is called, "On the Plurality of
Worlds;" Brewster's, "More Worlds than One." I shouldn't wonder if you
know all about them. They bring together a vast number of points of
great interest in natural philosophy, and some very curious reasoning on
both sides, and leave the matter pretty much where it was.

We had a fine absurdity in connection with our luggage, when we left
Boulogne. The barometer had within a few hours fallen about a foot, in
honour of the occasion, and it was a tremendous night, blowing a gale of
wind and raining a little deluge. The luggage (pretty heavy, as you may
suppose), in a cart drawn by two horses, stuck fast in a rut in our
field, and couldn't be moved. Our man, made a lunatic by the extremity
of the occasion, ran down to the town to get two more horses to help it
out, when he returned with those horses and carter B, the most beaming
of men; carter A, who had been soaking all the time by the disabled
vehicle, descried in carter B the acknowledged enemy of his existence,
took his own two horses out, and walked off with them! After which, the
whole set-out remained in the field all night, and we came to town,
thirteen individuals, with one comb and a pocket-handkerchief. I was
upside-down during the greater part of the passage.

Dr. Rae's account of Franklin's unfortunate party is deeply interesting;
but I think hasty in its acceptance of the details, particularly in the
statement that they had eaten the dead bodies of their companions, which
I don't believe. Franklin, on a former occasion, was almost starved to
death, had gone through all the pains of that sad end, and lain down to
die, and no such thought had presented itself to any of them. In famous
cases of shipwreck, it is very rare indeed that any person of any
humanising education or refinement resorts to this dreadful means of
prolonging life. In open boats, the coarsest and commonest men of the
shipwrecked party have done such things; but I don't remember more than
one instance in whi