“I hope you have heard no more of Bradlaugh. I’d not like to carry any memory of him with me, which I might if he were annoying you. What a beast I am to obtrude my sadness against the blaze of your Xmas fire! I thought, however, you would like to hear I was yet here,--though to what end or for what use, if I continue as I now am, is not easy to see. I feel, however, that if I was freely bled and a little longer starved, I’d soon be in the frame of mind I detect in my colleagues of the Consular service here, and that, with a slight dash of paralysis, I should soon be _à l’hauteur_ of my employment in the public service. “I have resolved to devote my first moment of strength to a despatch to F. O., and if I be only half an imbecile as I believe, I shall crown myself with imperishable laurel. “It’s a bore for a man--especially an Irishman--to be called away when the rows are beginning! Now next year there will be wigs on the green and no mistake. Besides, I’d like to see Gladstone well away in the deep slough of Disendowment, which I know he’ll fall into. Disestablish he may, but the other will be a complication that nothing but open robbery could deal with. “Then I’d like to see him lose his temper, and perhaps lose his place.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Dec_. 29, 1868. “Weak as I am, I must thank you for your kind note, which has done me a deal of good. I assure you I never valued kindness more, and I will ask you to say as much for me to your wife, and to thank her sincerely for all her sympathy and good feeling for me. “I am, I take it, about as well as I shall ever be again, which is not much to boast of,--but I really am past boasting in any sense; and provided I do not die at the top first, like the cabbage palms, I ought to be thankful. “I wish with all my heart I could be your guest, in such guise as I might hope to be; now I am not worth my salt. I was dreaming away to-day of making an O’Dowd will, and leaving to the public my speculations on many things ere I go. “We are living amidst wars and alarms here. Greeks and Turks seem eager to be at each other; and if talking and bumptiousness should carry the day, Heaven help the poor Turk! “I know Hobart well; and why he didn’t sink the _Enosis_ when she fired on him I can’t conceive, all the more as he is always at least half screwed (they must have watered his grog that morning). The Greeks here have subscribed a million of florins (£100,000), and have ordered an armour-plated frigate to be built and launched by the 20th Feb. I don’t know whether all the row will induce the Turks to cede territory, but I’m perfectly certain that it will end by our giving up Gibraltar, though the logic of the proceeding may be a little puzzling at first blush.