Sir Robert Peel has behaved in the handsomest manner in the matter. He says it is by no means his wish to rob the Whigs of the gratitude of Ireland for the Maynooth measure. Certainly not: they, no doubt, could have carried it had he joined them; this, however, he would not do: he has, however, no objection that they should join _him_. And so they may have the gratitude, and he the patronage and power. They have helped him to open the oyster; he swallows the fish, and they are quite welcome to the shells. It is quite a delight to read Sir Robert’s Parliament speeches. Did you ever talk to a man who seemed never to hear what you said, but only thought what he should say to pass for an answer? who seemed as though none of your words entered his ears, but all slid down his cheeks? I’ve met with such people, and Sir Robert Peel--when I read his Maynooth speeches--does remind me of ’em. What a way he has of talking _down the side_ of a speech, and never answering it direct! I hardly wonder that the playhouses don’t flourish, when there’s such capital actors of all sorts in the Houses of Parliament. I had just been reading an account of two or three more Maynooth meetings, where some of the speakers talked about the true and the false religion, as though themselves had a sole and certain knowledge of what was true--what false: I had just been reading all this, when my eye fell upon a paragraph headed “Lord Rosse’s Telescope.” Lord Rosse, you must know, is one of those noblemen who do not pull off knockers, knock down cabmen, and always take a front seat at the Old Bailey on a trial for murder. No: he has been making an enormous telescope; and the paragraph I write of says: “Marvellous rumours are afloat respecting the astronomical discoveries made by Lord Rosse’s monster telescope. It is said that Regulus, instead of being a sphere, is ascertained to be a disc; and stranger still, that the nebula in the belt of Orion is a universal system--a sun with planets moving round it, as the earth and her fellow-orbs move round our glorious luminary.” Now, at one time, a man might have been burnt alive for taking it upon himself to say that Regulus was not a sphere but a disc; and that Orion (I know nothing about him, save and except that a marvellously fine poem, price one farthing, was lately published with his name) did not wear in his belt any nebula, but a universal system! La, grandmother! when I read of these things, I feel a mixture of pain and pity for men that, instead of having their hearts and spirits tuned by the harmony that God is always playing to them (and they won’t hear it, the leathern-eared sinners!) think of nothing but swearing that one thing’s a disc, and the other a nebula--when they only look through small glasses, wanting the great telescope to show ’em the real truth!--And so no more from your affectionate grandson, JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.