that Babbage's calculating machine
could turn up in twenty generations, would stand in the long run against
the general heart."

Of other topics in his letters, one or two have the additional
attractiveness derivable from touches of personal interest when these
may with propriety be printed. Hardly within the class might have fallen
a mention of Mark Lemon, of whom our recent play, and his dramatic
adaptation of the _Chimes_, had given him pleasant experiences, if I
felt less strongly not only that its publication would have been gladly
sanctioned by the subject of it, but that it will not now displease
another to whom also it refers, herself the member of a family in
various ways distinguished on the stage, and to whom, since her
husband's death, well-merited sympathy and respect have been paid.
"After turning Mrs. Lemon's portrait over, in my mind, I am convinced
that there is not a grain of bad taste in the matter, and that there is
a manly composure and courage in the proceeding deserving of the utmost
respect. If Lemon were one of your braggart honest men, he would set a
taint of bad taste upon that action as upon everything else he might say
or do; but being what he is, I admire him for it greatly, and hold it to
be a proof of an exalted nature and a true heart. Your idea of him, is
mine. I am sure he is an excellent fellow. We talk about not liking such
and such a man because he doesn't look one in the face,--but how much we
should esteem a man who looks the world in the face, composedly, and
neither shirks it nor bullies it. Between ourselves, I say with shame
and self-reproach that I am quite sure if Kate had been a Columbine her
portrait would not be hanging, 'in character,' in Devonshire-terrace."

He speaks thus of a novel by Hood. "I have been reading poor Hood's
_Tylney Hall_; the most extraordinary jumble of impossible extravagance,
and especial cleverness, I ever saw. The man drawn to the life from the
pirate-bookseller, is wonderfully good; and his recommendation to a
reduced gentleman from the university, to rise from nothing as he, the
pirate, did, and go round to the churches and see whether there's an
opening, and begin by being a beadle, is one of the finest things I ever
read, in its way." The same letter has a gentle little trait of the
great duke, touching in its simplicity, and worth preserving. "I had a
letter from Tagart the day before yesterday, with a curious little
anecdote of the Duke o