Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/82

 and English opinion scarcely took the pains of discriminating between them.

When the minority coalesced with the Whigs and Peelites it was assumed that the majority would coalesce with the Tories. The House did not in the least understand that these men had no personal aims, and had no alliance or understanding with either of the only parties it recognised. From that time the Irish Party, which had carried their Land Bill to a second reading, were divided into almost equal parts, and it was soon known that Archbishop Cullen and the bulk of the Catholic Bishops adhered to the minority. Mr. Keogh, whose re-election was delayed by a petition, got elected and came before his sympathisers, like Richard of Gloucester, leaning on the arm of a bishop, the same bishop who half a dozen years before had gone to Conciliation Hall to proclaim that the Young Irelanders were the enemies of religion.

I must recur to my diary for some social gossip to relieve the painful strain of politics at this time:—

"There was no business on the paper to-night in which I took the least interest, and I accepted an invitation from J—— to walk home and dine with him. Our way lay through a wilderness called Victoria Street. It is a huge road that pierces one of the worst quarters in Westminster, running for half a mile, apparently, from the Abbey in the direction of Eccleston Square. J—— said he had shot snipe formerly within a gunshot, and I suggested that he might shoot sparrows still, for there are not half a dozen houses yet built, and there is a general air of desolation and loneliness which is alarming. After dinner a curious accident befell. The hostess, a sentimental young woman, produced her album and asked me what I thought of the verses with which the volume opened, while J—— smiled with a significance, the meaning of which I altogether misunderstood, when I saw that the verses were some I had written for the Vindicator ten years ago. 'I think,' I said, laughing, 'they are dreadful drivel. The hyperbolical devotion of Corydon to his shepherdess, reminds me of Moore's lines—

"'He thought her a goddess, she thought him a fool,'

(as I have no doubt she did),

'And I'll swear she was most in the right.'