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Capponi, Florence, March 30, 1864.

      “I was sorry to find last night that my proofs had not reached you, and as I want your opinion greatly, I send you mine, which I have not looked over yet.

      “If it had not been for this detestable weather (and I can fancy how Spezzia looks in it, for even Florence is dismal) I’d have gone down to-day, for my wife has been a shade better since Sunday, and I want to have a good conscience and be assured that I cannot possibly find a house at Spezzia before I close for a little nook of a villa here – a small crib enough, but, like everything else, very dear.

      “I have my misgivings, my more than misgivings, about the Derbys coming in. It is evident Lord D. does not wish power, and he is rather impatient at the hungry eagerness of poorer men, and so I suspect my own chances, if not to be tried now, will not be likely to survive for another occasion. I therefore resign myself, as people call what they cannot do more than grumble over, and ‘make my book’ to scribble on for a subsistence to the end.”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Croce di Malta, Spezzia, April 6, 1864.

      “Here I am visiting the authorities and being visited by them, playing off – and quite seriously too – the farce that we are all dignitaries, and of essential consequence to the States we severally serve. ‘How we apples swim!’ My only consolation is that there is no public to laugh at us – all the company are on the stage.

      “I mean to get back to Florence by the end of the week. You shall have an instalment of T. B. immediately.

      “If Lord D. gets his congress for Denmark it will be hard to dislodge the Government – the more with a two-million-and-a-half surplus. In fact, a good harvest is the Providence of the Whigs, and they are invariably pulled out of their scrapes by sheer luck. At the same time, if Lord Derby comes in, where could he find a Foreign Minister?”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Croce di Malta, Spezzia, April 6, 1864

      “The post has just brought me O’D. on ‘Whist,’ but no proof of ‘The Woman in Diplomacy.’ Perhaps I blundered and never sent it, or perhaps you got but did not like it. At all events, I return the ‘Whist’ by this post corrected. If there had been time I’d have dashed off an O’D. on French Justice in Criminal Cases, apropos to that late infamy of M. Pellier, but I fancied you had got enough of O’D. for this coming month, and probably you are of the same mind.

      “I have done my consulars here – that is, I have called on the authorities and had them all to dinner, the bishop included; and we have fraternised very cordially and drank all manner of violent deaths to Mazzini, and to-morrow I go back into the obscurity of private life, and forget if I can that I have been a great man. Wasn’t it a Glasgow dignitary who resented being called a man on a trial, and exclaimed, ‘I’m not a man, I’m a bailie’?

      “I see by ‘The Telegraph’ that Lord Clarendon has joined the Government and Stansfield left. There is a twofold game in that, for I don’t despair of seeing them beaten if the Queen does not put pressure on Lord Derby, for there is a sentiment in his class that, with regard to the Crown, rises above all party considerations, and represents that old feudal feeling by which nobles stood round the monarchy at any personal loss or peril.

      “That letter to ‘The Times’ about the Italian Government seizing Garibaldi’s balance at his banker’s is all rot. The Government simply sequestrated a revolutionary fund subscribed by revolutionists for public disturbance, and openly, flagrantly so done. Why will patriots never be truthful?”

      To Dr Burbidge.

      “Casa Capponi, Thursday, 10, 1864.

      “These questionable publishers who say, ‘Buy my share and I’ll give you a book,’ represent the contract by which Sanders obtained Marola. That is, he bought the shares – viz., the house, and they gave him the book, meaning the ‘Arsenal.’ All fair and right so far! But nobody ever supposed that the share was connected with the book, had a market value, or was worth more to a purchaser than its price as a share. Now the opposite is precisely the mistake Sanders has fallen into. The rent of Marola represents in pounds the eagerness of M. Bolla to sign a certain agreement, but I have no such eagerness; for me no docks are digged, no mud excavated, no roads cut up and trees cut down; I have no interest in all the filth, dirt, drunkenness, or small assassinations introduced into a once lonely spot; I neither derive ten per cent profits or sixty per cent frauds. I have no part in the honest gains of Sanders or in the wholesale robberies of Bolla, – I merely want a house at the price of a house. Hence to pay £60 to £70 for a two-floor villa, furnished! – three chairs and the bath, – is certes too dear, not to add the Mackie difficulty. I have nothing definitely about my villa here, nor need I for some days.

      “Is the wretched little toy-house under the Cappucines still unlet? and if so, what rent does M. Torri expect for it? – for, though he has no straw, he has more than the equivalent in the pestilent rascality of a true Spezzino.

      “I hear from ‘The Morning Post’ people that Pam has at length got the Emperor’s consent to be warlike. A la remarque de la France is a tune we know better nowadays than ‘Rule Britannia.’ The story goes: he, L. N., is to have the freyen deutschen Rhein, and we are to be permitted to fill up again M. Lessep’s canal at Suez —suum caique.

      “Who is to say l’Alliance brings no gain? One clears a river, t’other fills a drain.

      “It is absurd to revile – as ‘The Times’ does – the Derbys for not announcing a policy. It is only a wise precaution in a bather who has once been robbed to hide his clothes when he next goes for a swim. This is all Dizzy is doing.

      “I am now in a rare mess about ‘Luttrell,’ and cannot write a word.”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Croce di Malta, Spezzia, April 7, 1864.

      “I now send you the June ‘Tony,’ anxious to hear that you are satisfied. If I bore you by my insistence in this way, my excuse is that just as a sharp-flavoured wine turns quickest to vinegar, all the once lightness of heart I had has now grown to a species of irritable anxiety. Of course it is the dread a man feels of growing old lest he become more feeble than he even suspects, and I confess to you that I can put up with my shaky knees and swelled ankles better than I can with my shortcomings in brain matters. At all events, I am doing as well as I can, and quite ready to be taught to do better.”

      To Mr John Blackwood.

      “Casa Capponi, Florence, April 11, 1864.

      “Only think of finding in ‘The Galignani’ yesterday this paragraph about Flynn. I send it to you, leaving it entirely to your choice to insert in next O’D. It has this merit, that it will serve to show O’D. is not all imaginary, but that it deals with real rogues as well as with men in buckram suits.

      “I have got an ‘O’Dowd’ in my head that I think will amuse you if I can write it as it struck me, – a thing that does not always happen, I am sorry to say.

      “The Italians were at first very savage about all your Garibaldian enthusiasm. Now, however, with true Italian subtlety they affect to take it as a national compliment. This is clever.”

      From Mr John Blackwood.

      “Edinburgh, April 5, 1864.

      “In walking home together yesterday afternoon, Aytoun and I had fits of laughter over O’Dowd. The thing that has tickled him is the victim of Cavour’s eternal schemes for Italian progress, especially the plans turning up in the dead man’s bureau. He agrees with me in thinking that you have completely taken second wind. I improved the occasion by commenting upon his own utter incapacity, – the lazy villain has not written a line for two years. A sheriffship and a professorship are fatal to literary industry. It would be well worth while for any Government to give any man who is active in writing against them a good fat place, but it is fatal for them so to patronise their friends. God

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