“A happy Xmas to you and your wife. Give her all my best wishes and warm regards; as for me,-- “The time of mince-pies, mistletoe, and buns, The time that tells of all that bright and neat is, Only brings thoughts of Xmas bills and duns, Confounded chilblains and my old bronchitis. “This short month drives me close to time, or I should have liked to add something to the Persano sketch. I find it is a subject immensely talked of by our people (sailors) at home, and that opinion is more favourable to him in England than in Italy. There is no time, however, for this now. “I suspect Dizzy’s plurality of votes scheme is utter failure. A Bill of Reform must be simple, even at the cost of some efficiency in details. It is a weapon to be used by coarse hands--and every day of the week besides. “I have heard nothing more about myself since I wrote. I suppose it is all right, but I know nothing. “Did I tell you that I met Gladstone here? I don’t think I ever saw a more consummate actor,--what the French call _poseur_,--with all the outward semblance of perfect indifference to display and complete forgetfulness of self. Even Disraeli himself is less artificial.” _To Dr Burbidge._ “Trieste, _Dec. 20_, 1867. “I have been planning I don’t know how many letters to you, as I wanted, _imprimis_, to have a consultation with you about literaries, books to be written, &c., but so many _pros_ and _cons_ got into the controversy I saw it must be talked, not written. Then came on a severe cold, lumbago, &c, and so time slipped over, and I half fancied that I had written and was awaiting your answer. This was stupid enough; but remember where I am living, and with _what_. “Of all the dreary places it has been my fate to sojourn in, this is the very worst. There are not three people to be known; for myself, I do not know one. English are, of course, out of the question. Even as a novelist I could make nothing out of the stoker and engineer class. Then as for all the others, they are the men of oakum, hides, tallow, and tobacco, who are, so far as I can guess, about on a par with fourth-rate shopkeepers in an English provincial town. The place is duller, the tone lower, the whole social atmosphere crasser and heavier than I could have believed possible in a town where the intelligence to make money exists so palpably. “My ‘leap in the dark’ has cost me dearly, for, as Paddy says, I have only gained a loss by coming here. Even as it is, if my wife’s health admitted of moving I’d pitch it up to-morrow and run away--anywhere--ere softening of the brain came on as the sequela of hardening of the heart.