"I well intended to have written from Ireland, but alas! as some
stern old divine says, 'Hell is paved with good intentions.'
There was such a whirl of laking, and boating, and wondering,
and shouting, and laughing, and carousing--" [He alludes to his
visiting among the Westmoreland and Cumberland lakes on his way
home, especially] "so much to be seen, and so little time to see
it; so much to be heard, and only two ears to listen to twenty
voices, that upon the whole I grew desperate, and gave up all
thoughts of doing what was right and proper on post-days, and so
all my epistolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I
suppose, 'the burning marle' of the infernal regions."

How easily a showy absurdity is substituted for a serious truth, and
taken for granted to be the right sense. Without having been there, I
may venture to affirm that "Hell is _not_ paved with good intentions,
such things being _all lost or dropt on the way_ by travellers who reach
that bourne;" for, where "Hope never comes," "good intentions" cannot
exist any more than they can be formed, since to fulfil them were
impossible. The authentic and emphatical figure in the saying is, "The
_road_ to hell is paved with good intentions;" and it was uttered by the
"stern old divine," whoever he might be, as a warning _not_ to let "good
intentions" miscarry for want of being realized at the time and upon the
spot. The moral, moreover, is manifestly this, that people may be going
to hell with "the best intentions in the world," substituting all the
while _well-meaning_ for _well-doing_.

J.M.G

Hallamshire.

* * * * *

THE EARL OF NORWICH AND HIS SON GEORGE LORD GORING.

As in small matters accuracy is of vital consequence, let me correct a
mistake which I made, writing in a hurry, in my last communication about
the two Gorings (Vol. ii., p. 65.). The Earl of Norwich was not under
sentence of death, as is there stated, on January 8, 1649. He was then a
prisoner: he was not tried and sentenced till March.[2]

The following notice of the son's quarrels with his brother cavaliers
occurs in a letter printed in Carte's bulky appendix to his bulky _Life
of the Duke of Ormond_. As this is an unread book, you may think it
worth while to print the passage, which is only confirmatory of
Clarendon's account of the younger Goring's proceedings in the West of
England in 1645. The letter is f