Without going into any of the events which have occurred in the course of this year, I cannot help noticing the state of public opinion and feeling which appears at its close. Questions which not long ago interested and agitated the world have been laid upon the shelf; the thoughts of mankind seem to be turned into other channels. It is curious to look at the sort of subjects which now nearly monopolise general interest and attention. First and foremost there is the Corn Law and the League; the Corn Law, which Charles Villiers (I must do him the justice to say) long ago predicted to me would supersede every other topic of interest, and so it undoubtedly has. Then the condition of the people, moral and physical, is uppermost in everybody's mind, the state and management of workhouses and prisons, and the great question of education. The newspapers are full of letters and complaints on these subjects, and people think, talk, and care about them very much. And last, but not least, come the Church questions--the Church of Scotland, the Church of England, the Dissenters, the Puseyites. Great and increasing is the interest felt in all the multifarious grievances or pretensions put forth by any and all of the above denominations, and much are men's minds turned to religious subjects. One proof of this may be found in the avidity with which the most remarkable charges of several of the Bishops have been read, the prodigious number of copies of them which have been sold. Of these, the principal are the charges of the Bishops of London (Blomfield), Exeter (Phillpotts), and St. David's (Thirlwall), especially the second. This charge, which is very able, contains _inter alia_ an attack upon Newman for Tract No. 90, and a most elaborate argument, very powerful, in reply to a judgement delivered by Brougham at the Privy Council in the case of Escott v. Mastyn on Lay Baptism. The circumstances attending the termination of the war in Afghanistan have elicited a deep and general feeling of indignation and disgust. Ellenborough's ridiculous and bombastic proclamations, and the massacres and havoc perpetrated by his armies, are regarded with universal contempt and abhorrence. An evil fate seems to have attended this operation from first to last. Every individual who has been concerned in it, almost without exception, has rendered himself obnoxious to censure or reproach of some sort. Civil and military authorities appear to have alike lost all their sense and judgement, and our greatest successes have been attended with nearly as much discredit as our most deplorable reverses. Auckland and Ellenborough, Burnes and M'Naghten, Keane, Elphinstone, Pollock, and Nott, are all put on their defence on one account or another. On the whole, it is the most painful and disgraceful chapter in our history for many a long day. [Sidenote: DUKE OF WELLINGTON ON THE AFGHAN WAR.] CHAPTER XV.