APPENDIX. 563 



seems to be quite at a loss as to what steps it ought to take. The 

 prosecution of O'Connell and others is folly in the extreme. Should 

 all the accused be condemned and sent to prison, that step will 

 only tend to embarrass the Government still more. 



To the Same. 



WALTON HALL, January 30, 1846. 



My dear Friend, You would have learnt by my last that I was on 

 the point of sailing for Madeira, having been ordered to do so, most 

 unexpectedly, on account of Miss Edmonstone's indisposition. We 

 had a charming passage of twelve days, and accommodations in the 

 very first style. Miss Edmonstone got well before we landed. So 

 soon as we got into warm weather, the cough gave way, and the 

 expectoration ceased. Having located her and her sister in a beauti- 

 ful country house, about a mile from Funchal, and where they will 

 stay till the end of next May, I took my leave of a terrestrial paradise 

 (there not being sufficient in the bird line to give me occupation for 

 half a year), and I returned home, to witness in England scenes of 

 vexation, speculations in railroads, and quarrels in politics, the 

 nuisances of which far, far exceed the slender powers of my pen to 

 describe. 



I cannot divest myself of the idea that our aristocracy is about to 

 be severely punished by the hand of Heaven. When I reflect that 

 it was the aristocracy which destroyed the religion of our ancestors ; 

 that it was the aristocracy which seized upon, and has enjoyed up to 

 this day the sacred property bequeathed by pious Christians for very 

 different purposes ; and that it was the aristocracy which framed the 

 diabolical penal laws, and put them into execution with a cruelty 

 surpassing that of a Nero, or a Dioclesian, I must say that I tremble 

 at what I see on the political horizon before me. 



But let us pass to something more congenial to our mutual feelings. 

 I see by the last number of the Zoologist that our wise-noodles in 

 ornithology, with the late Baron Cuvier at their head, have raised 

 your real, well-known, well-proved American Canada goose to the 

 dignity of a swan ! / / Cuvier, although a great philosopher, and a 



