f the
facts is altogether missed in the narrative. The wrong which chanced to
be set right in these two cases was done, as all such wrong is, mainly
because these wicked courts of equity, with all their means of evasion
and postponement, give scoundrels confidence in cheating. If justice
were cheap, sure, and speedy, few such things could be. It is because it
has become (through the vile dealing of those courts and the vermin they
have called into existence) a positive precept of experience that a man
had better endure a great wrong than go, or suffer himself to be taken,
into Chancery, with the dream of setting it right. It is because of
this that such nefarious speculations are made.

Therefore I see nothing at all to the credit of Chancery in these cases,
but everything to its discredit. And as to owing it to Chancery to bear
testimony to its having rendered justice in two such plain matters, I
have no debt of the kind upon my conscience.

In haste, ever faithfully.

[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]

BOULOGNE, _Friday, August 8th, 1856._

MY DEAREST MACREADY,

I like the second little poem very much indeed, and think (as you do)
that it is a great advance upon the first. Please to note that I make it
a rule to pay for everything that is inserted in "Household Words,"
holding it to be a part of my trust to make my fellow-proprietors
understand that they have no right to unrequited labour. Therefore, when
Wills (who has been ill and is gone for a holiday) does his invariable
spiriting gently, don't make Katey's case different from Adelaide
Procter's.

I am afraid there is no possibility of my reading Dorsetshirewards. I
have made many conditional promises thus: "I am very much occupied; but
if I read at all, I will read for your institution in such an order on
my list." Edinburgh, which is No. 1, I have been obliged to put as far
off as next Christmas twelvemonth. Bristol stands next. The working men
at Preston come next. And so, if I were to go out of the record and read
for your people, I should bring such a house about my ears as would
shake "Little Dorrit" out of my head.

Being in town last Saturday, I went to see Robson in a burlesque of
"Medea." It is an odd but perfectly true testimony to the extraordinary
power of his performance (which is of a very remarkable kind indeed),
that it points the badness of ----'s acting in a mo