reached Banagher in 1841, I dined one evening with a Roman Catholic.
I was informed next day by a Protestant gentleman who had been
very hospitable to me that I must choose my party. I could not sit
both at Protestant and Catholic tables. Such a caution would now
be impossible in any part of Ireland. Home-rule, no doubt, is a
nuisance,--and especially a nuisance because the professors of the
doctrine do not at all believe it themselves. There are probably
no other twenty men in England or Ireland who would be so utterly
dumfounded and prostrated were Home-rule to have its way as the
twenty Irish members who profess to support it in the House of
Commons. But it is not to be expected that nuisances such as these
should be abolished at a blow. Home-rule is, at any rate, better
and more easily managed than the rebellion at the close of the
last century; it is better than the treachery of the Union; less
troublesome than O'Connell's monster meetings; less dangerous than
Smith O'Brien and the battle of the cabbage-garden at Ballingary,
and very much less bloody than Fenianism. The descent from O'Connell
to Mr. Butt has been the natural declension of a political disease,
which we had no right to hope would be cured by any one remedy.

When I had been married a year my first novel was finished. In
July, 1845, I took it with me to the north of England, and intrusted
the MS. to my mother to do with it the best she could among the
publishers in London. No one had read it but my wife; nor, as far
as I am aware, has any other friend of mine ever read a word of
my writing before it was printed. She, I think, has so read almost
everything, to my very great advantage in matters of taste. I am sure
I have never asked a friend to read a line; nor have I ever read a
word of my own writing aloud,--even to her. With one exception,--which
shall be mentioned as I come to it,--I have never consulted a friend