“The heat has been nigh killing us all here. Sydney was thrown down by sunstroke on Sunday coming from church, and is still in bed, but now better. The heat was 94° in the shade, and people who had come from Egypt say they had never suffered anything like it there. My poor wife has felt it severely, and the strongest of us have had to give up food and exercise, and merely wait for evening to breathe freely. “Pray make them send me June No., for I can’t follow the story till I get it. “Don’t you think that they have hunted down that blackguard, Grenville Murray, too inhumanly even for a blackguard!--I do. (I mean Knox’s decision.)” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Sept. 6._ “I thank you much for your generous remittance. I have not been doing anything lately for a heavy feverish cold, which has kept me in a dark room and a low diet. “I want to write to you about Byron, but I will wait till I see if General Mengaldo (Byron’s old Venetian friend) will give me leave to tell _his_ story of Byron’s separation, and confute the Yankee woman whose name I have not temper to write. “Mengaldo lived more in Byron’s intimacy as an equal (not a dependant) than any one during Byron’s life at Venice, and would be a mine of curious information if he could be led to open it. Hudson alone has influence with him, and since I saw that woman’s book I wrote to H. about it. “There is a most curious little volume just out by Persano, ‘The Hero of Lessa,’ all about Cavour and Garibaldi, confirming everything I once wrote you about Cavour’s complicity and duplicity. Would you like a short notice or review of it? “My wife is most seriously ill, the rest all well.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “_Sept_. 26,1869. “I have just read the O’D. about Canning to the Chief Baron, who has been dining here with me, and I send it hoping you will laugh at it as much as he did: he also liked the Fenian paper much, and I send them both at once, as if you have anything to add, &c, there will be ample time. “I never write a line now but O’D., and I only send you about one in every five I invent, for the time is not propitious in new subjects. “My poor wife continues seriously ill, and I am myself so worn by watching and anxiety that I am scarcely alive.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Oct_. 8,1869. “I don’t like delaying this O’D., though I thought at one time to keep it till I had heard from you. The ‘Austrian Free Press’ has translated the Austrian O’D. and the Persano one, and the German party seems greatly pleased with the tone of the first, though of course the Italians are indignant. “I think you will like the bit about Baron Warde in this O’D. It was to Lord Normanby I presented him, at a party at Scarlett’s, who was then British Chargé d’Affaires. “I have little heart to do anything. My wife has had to submit to a third operation, and cannot rally from the great nervous depression, and has now ceased her only nourishment, wine.