House of
Commons.' Indeed it is a dismal sight, is that arena altogether. Its
irrationality and dishonesty are quite shocking." [What would he have
said now!] "How disheartening it is, that in affairs spiritual or
temporal mankind will not begin at the beginning, but _will_ begin
with assumptions. Could one believe without actual experience of the
fact, that it would be assumed by hundreds of thousands of pestilent
boobies, pandered to by politicians, that the Established Church in
Ireland has stood between the kingdom and Popery, when as a crying
grievance it has been Popery's trump-card!

"I have now growled out my growl, and feel better.

"With kind regards, my dear Trollope,

"Faithfully yours,

"CHARLES DICKENS."

* * * * *

In the December of that year came another growl, as follows:--

* * * * *

"KENNEDY'S HOTEL, EDINBURGH.

"MY DEAR TROLLOPE,--I am reading here, and had your letter forwarded
to me this morning. The MS. accompanying it was stopped at _All The
Year Round_ office (in compliance with general instructions referring
to any MS. from you) and was sent straight to the printer.

"Oh dear no! Nobody supposes for a moment that the English Church
will follow the Irish Establishment. In the whole great universe of
shammery and flummery there is no such idea floating. Everybody knows
that the Church of England as an endowed establishment is doomed, and
would be, even if its hand were not perpetually hacking at its own
throat; but as was observed of an old lady in gloves in one of my
Christmas books, 'Let us be polite or die!'

"Anthony's ambition" [in becoming a candidate for Beverley] "is
inscrutable to me. Still, it is the ambition of many men; and the
honester the man who entertains it, the better for the rest of us, I
suppose.

"Ever, my dear Trollope,

"Most cordially yours,

"CHARLES DICKENS."

* * * * *

Here is another "growl," provoked by a species of charlatan, which
he, to whom all charlatans were odious, especially abominated--the
pietistic charlatan:--

* * * * *

"Oh, we have such a specimen here! a man who discourses
extemporaneously, positively without the power of constructing one
grammatical sentence; but who is (ungrammatically) deep in Heaven's
confidence on the abstrusest points, and discloses some of his private
information with an idiotic