“As to the Volunteers, respect for what you think of them (and I do not) always holds my hands when I allude to them. I would not take a foreigner’s opinion on an English _institution_, though I would respectfully listen to his judgment on a professional matter,--as, for instance, if N. were to talk of a cancer or an aneurism, I would accept his competence to pronounce in the same way [as] when a French soldier like MacMahon or Pallitan, or an Austrian such as Hess, or a Russian like T., derides the idea of such bodies being called soldiers, and advises England not to trust to such defence if the hour of invasion approach. I really feel that it requires great self-restraint not to speak out on an inefficiency made all the more insufferable by an overweening vanity and bumptiousness of conduct (as witness the walk past t’other day at Brussels) that makes one anything but proud of the common countyship. “Fortunately for your patience I am writing near the post hour, and I must spare you a long discourse on these two themes that you do not seem to think the world will much care for, but that I believe are both of them the very subjects men will be inclined to talk over. “I half doubted whether, after your dissatisfaction with what I thought good and well-timed, I should forward this O’D. on ‘Irish Queries ‘; but it is a mere argument, treated Hibernically, and you will do what you like with it. “My home is a very sad one, and I see little prospect of brighter fortune. “A serious revolt has just broken out in Dalmatia. The peasants refuse to be enrolled in the Landwehr, and have risen, and, up to this, resisted the troops with success. Of course the thing is deeper than a mere local row, and being on the Montenegrin frontier, has an uncommonly ugly look. Three thousand men have been despatched and two gunboats this morning to Cáttaro, and there will be warm work there before to-morrow evening. Austria is in that state that any one movement of her incongruous nationalities may bring down the whole rotten edifice with a run. “I think Sydney is ‘brewing an MS.,’ for I scarcely see her all day, and she has a half conscious air of authorship at dinner.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Oct_. 27, 1869. “I send you I think a smart O’Dowd ‘On the Misery of Singing without an Accompaniment’ (or rather, speaking without a brogue). I’m terribly hipped: I wish to God I could get out of this! If nothing else offers, perhaps I could get Elizabeth Barry to steal me: I’d make no objection to her cutting off my curls, and as to my clothes, I’ll be shot if she could change them for worse.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Nov_. 9, 1869. “I have detained these proofs that I might hear from you; but the snow has begun to make the passes difficult for the post, and I think it better to despatch them. I hope you’ll think them good. There was a slaughter of the innocents last month--that is, if they ever reached you.