g at whist and lost it all.
FitzGerald said to me that he had a great mind to write upon
Ireland, and make a statement of the conduct of England towards
Ireland for ages past; that he had mentioned his idea to Peel,
who had replied, 'Well, and if you do, I am not the man to object
to your doing so.' This he meant as a trait of his fairness and
candour; but the fact is that it is Peel's interest that all
Irish questions should be settled, and he would rejoice at
anything which tended to accelerate a settlement, and I am no
great believer in his fairness. I was struck with a great
admiration for Peel during his hundred days' struggle, when he
made a gallant fight; but this has very much cooled since that
time.

FitzGerald said one thing in conversation with me of which I
painfully felt the truth, that an addiction to worthless or
useless pursuits did an irretrievable injury to the mental
faculties. It is not only the actual time wasted which might have
been turned to good account; the slender store of knowledge
acquired on all subjects instead of the accumulation which there
might have been; but, more than these, the relaxation of the
mental powers till they become incapable of vigorous exertion or
sustained effort:--

Quoniam medio de fonte leporum
Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat:
Aut quum conscius ipse animus se forte remordet
Desidiose agere aetatem, lustrisque perire.

Or, as Dryden nobly translates it--

For in the fountain where these sweets are sought
Some bitter bubbles up, and poisons all the draught.
First guilty conscience does the mirror bring,
Then sharp remorse shoots out the angry sting,
And anxious thoughts, within themselves at strife,
Upbraid the long misspent, luxurious life.

[Page Head: REFLEXIONS.]

I feel myself a miserable example of this species of injury, both
as relates to the defects and omissions of my early education and
the evil of my subsequent habits. From never having studied hard
at any time, no solid foundation of knowledge has ever been laid,
my subsequent reading has been desultory and very nearly useless.
I have attacked various subjects as I have been prompted thereto
by curiosity, or vanity, or shame, but I have never mastered any
of them, and the information I have obtained has been like a
house built without a foundation, which the first gust of wind
would bl