The talk wandered to Ireland. Forster said he thought Irish complaints were always exaggerated and often altogether unfounded. They complained of things which were the necessary and inevitable results of the British Empire. "Was it a necessary result," I inquired, "that the Irish should pay for the most profusely endowed Church in Europe, with which they refused to have any dealings?" "Certainly," Forster said, "it was a necessary result; the Irish were a minority in the Empire, and must accept the Church and the other institutions of the Empire as a consequence of that fact." I inquired if the Scotch and the Lower Canadians were not in the same condition, and yet escaped this inevitable penalty. Browning said that was a doctrine which he thought altogether indefensible. The Catholic Church was the Church of the Irish people, and the Protestant Church the Church of the English people, and this was a fact of which legislation might properly take cognisance. I said I was pleased to have Browning's support for so just and reasonable a doctrine, especially as I found throughout his poems the Catholic Church so habitually disparaged that I should have expected him rather than Forster of condemning it to perpetual subjection. Browning replied that the allusions to the Catholic Church, which I complained of, were mainly attributable to local circumstances. He had lived in Italy, and he took his illustrations of life from the facts which fell under his notice there; had he lived in England he would probably have taken them from the Church of which Forster was so enamoured. I said I had always assumed that one of his illustrations from the Catholic Church which was English and certainly unfriendly, Bishop Blogram was intended to suggest Cardinal Wiseman. Yes, he said, Bishop Blogram was certainly intended for the English Cardinal, but he was not treated ungenerously. I replied that I had lent that poem to a remarkably gifted young priest, who considered it more offensive than the naked scorn of Voltaire and Diderot. Browning spoke of Irish poets, and I asked Forster for a volume I had recently given him containing several of Sir Samuel Ferguson's poems. I read some verses of "The Welshmen of Tyrawley."
Forster said the ballad was vague and rhapsodical, with
