Next day I start for Dublin and Belfast. I
am just back from Scotland for a few Christmas holidays. I go back there
next month; and in the meantime and afterwards go everywhere else.

Take my guarantee for it, you may be quite comfortable on the subject of
papal aspirations and encroachments. The English people are in
unconquerable opposition to that church. They have the animosity in the
blood, derived from the history of the past, though perhaps
unconsciously. But they do sincerely want to win Ireland over if they
can. They know that since the Union she has been hardly used. They know
that Scotland has _her_ religion, and a very uncomfortable one. They
know that Scotland, though intensely anti-papal, perceives it to be
unjust that Ireland has not _her_ religion too, and has very
emphatically declared her opinion in the late elections. They know that
a richly-endowed church, forced upon a people who don't belong to it, is
a grievance with these people. They know that many things, but
especially an artfully and schemingly managed institution like the
Romish Church, thrive upon a grievance, and that Rome has thriven
exceedingly upon this, and made the most of it. Lastly, the best among
them know that there is a gathering cloud in the West, considerably
bigger than a man's hand, under which a powerful Irish-American body,
rich and active, is always drawing Ireland in that direction; and that
these are not times in which other powers would back our holding Ireland
by force, unless we could make our claim good in proving fair and equal
government.

Poor Townshend charged me in his will "to publish without alteration his
religious opinions, which he sincerely believed would tend to the
happiness of mankind." To publish them without alteration is absolutely
impossible; for they are distributed in the strangest fragments through
the strangest note-books, pocket-books, slips of paper and what not, and
produce a most incoherent and tautological result. I infer that he must
have held some always-postponed idea of fitting them together. For these
reasons I would certainly publish nothing about them, if I had any
discretion in the matter. Having none, I suppose a book must be made.
His pictures and rings are gone to the South Kensington Museum, and are
now exhibiting there.

Charley Collins is no better and no worse. Katie looks very young and
very pretty. Her sister and Miss Hogarth (my joint housekeepers) have
been on duty thi