_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 knows, however, that patronising their literary friends is a crime of which Governments are not often guilty, but I hope with all my heart that if we do come in, your turn, something good, will come at last.” _To Mr John Blackwood,_ “Casa Capponi, Florence, _April_ 17, 1864. “How glad I am to be the first to say there is to be no ‘mystery’ between us. I have wished for this many a day, and have only been withheld from feeling that I was not quite certain whether my gratitude for the cheer and encouragement you have given me might not have run away with my judgment and made me forget the force of the Italian adage, ‘It takes two to make a bargain.’