“Loss of rest at night and want of fresh air by day have worn me so much that I have no more energy left in me. Of course years have their share in this, and I don’t try to blink that. “Chas. Reade has found a sympathetic critic who has forgotten none of his merits; not but that on the whole I agree with him, and certainly concur in the belief that Reade has got nothing like his deserts in popular favour. The coarsenesses that disfigure him (and they do) are, after all, not worse than many in Balzac, and no one disputes _his_ supremacy. “They tell me that the Cabinet can’t agree about the Irish robbery bill; but I don’t think the thieves will fall out, seeing how much booty they have to divide elsewhere. It’s rather a good joke to see a Whig Radical Government trying to revive the Holy Alliance, and sending Lord Clarendon over Europe to concoct alliances against France. The fear of what will happen when L. N. dies is a strong bond of interest, and in the common fear of a great Democratic revolution even Austria and Prussia are willing to shake hands. Would it be well to O’Dowd them? “I wish I had three days with you in your breezy atmosphere to shake off my dumps and my dreariness.” _To Mr William Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Sunday_, Oct. 10. “As I have made a slight addition to the ‘Canning’ O’D., I do not like to delay the proof beyond to-day, to which I waited in hope of a letter from your uncle. “I have no good news to send of my poor wife, and I am very low and dispirited in consequence. “I had a capital O’D. in my head this morning, but a bad sermon I have just heard has driven it clean out of my mind. I am quite ready to disendow my consular chaplain, and won’t give him his Sunday dinner in consequence.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Oct_. 14,1869. “Many thanks for your cheque, which I have this moment received. “You are not, I think, quite just about the last two O’Ds. First of all, an O’D. need not, nor can it, be always an epigram; it must occasionally be an argument epigrammatically treated, and ‘Close and the Carmelite’ is, I believe, such. The changed position of two Churchmen (representatives as they are of schools of thought) is well worth notice, and it would be well to show that the Dean’s Protestantism is not the national religion.