Home Politics--Malthus Philosophy--Mark
Lemon--An Incident of Character--Hood's _Tylney
Hall_--Duke of Wellington--Lord Grey--A
Recollection of his Reporting Days--Returns to
_Dombey_--Two English Travellers--Party among
the Hills--Lord Vernon--A Wonderful
Carriage--Reading of First _Dombey_--A Sketch
from Life--Trip to Great St. Bernard--Ascent of
the Mountain--The Convent--Scene at the
Mountain Top--Bodies found in the Snow--The
Holy Fathers--A Holy Brother and _Pickwick_.

SOME sketches from the life in his pleasantest vein now claim to be
taken from the same series of letters; and I will prefix one or two less
important notices, for the most part personal also, that have
characteristic mention of his opinions in them.

Home-politics he criticized in what he wrote on the 24th of August, much
in the spirit of his last excellent remark on the Protestant and
Catholic cantons; having no sympathy with the course taken by the whigs
in regard to Ireland after they had defeated Peel on his coercion bill,
and resumed the government. "I am perfectly appalled by the hesitation
and cowardice of the whigs. To bring in that arms bill, bear the brunt
of the attack upon it, take out the obnoxious clauses, still retain the
bill, and finally withdraw it, seems to me the meanest and most halting
way of going to work that ever was taken. I cannot believe in them.
Lord John must be helpless among them. They seem somehow or other never
to know what cards they hold in their hands, and to play them out
blindfold. The contrast with Peel (as he was last) is, I agree with you,
certainly not favourable. I don't believe now they ever would have
carried the repeal of the corn law, if they could." Referring in the
same letter[124] to the reluctance of public men of all parties to give
the needful help to schemes of emigration, he ascribed it to a secret
belief "in the gentle politico-economical principle that a surplus
population must and ought to starve;" in which for himself he never
could see anything but disaster for all who trusted to it. "I am
convinced that its philosophers would sink any government, any cause,
any doctrine, even the most righteous. There is a sense and humanity in
the mass, in the long run, that will not bear them; and they will wreck
their friends always, as they wrecked them in the working of the
Poor-law-bill. Not all the figures