There was another breeze in the House of Lords about Irish Education, the whole bench of bishops in a flame, and except Maltby, who spoke _for_, all declared against the plan--Phillpotts in a furious speech. What celestial influences have been at work I know not, but certain it is that the world seems going mad, individually and collectively. The town has been more occupied this week with Dudley's extravagancies than the affairs of Europe. He, in fact, is mad, but is to be cupped and starved and disciplined sound again. It has been fine talk for the town. The public curiosity and love of news is as voracious and universal as the appetite of a shark, and, like it, loves best what is grossest and most disgusting; anything relating to personal distress, to crime, to passion, is greedily devoured by this monster, as Cowley calls it. I see The monster London laugh at me; I would at thee, too, foolish City, But thy estate I pity. Should all the wicked men from out thee go, And all the fools that crowd thee so, Thou, who dost thy thousands boast, Would be a wilderness almost.--_Ode to Solitude._ But of all the examples of cant, hypocrisy, party violence, I have never seen any to be compared to the Irish Education business; and there was Rosslyn, an old Whig, voting against; Carnarvon stayed away, every Tory without exception going against the measure. As to madness, Dudley has gone mad in his own house, Perceval in the House of Commons, and John Montague in the Park, the two latter preaching, both Irvingites and believers in 'the tongues.' Dudley's madness took an odd turn; he would make up all his quarrels with Lady Holland, to whom he has not spoken for sixteen years, and he called on her, and there were tears and embraces, and God knows what. Sydney Smith told her that she was bound in honour to set the quarrel up again when he comes to his senses, and put things into the _status quo ante pacem_. It would be hard upon him to find, on getting out of a strait waistcoat, that he had been robbed of all his hatreds and hostilities, and seduced into the house of his oldest foe. March 27th, 1832 {p.272} [Page Head: DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.]