“Thanks for your note and its enclosure, and thanks, too, for telling me that the deferred O’Ds. are not rejected ones, for I was getting low-spirited at the number of recruits sent back as below the standard. When I asked you to send me the unused, it was a painful confession. It was like a manufacturer owning to his being reduced to work up his old material. Perhaps I shall one of these days make an O’Dowd on ‘Devil’s Dust in Literature.’ What do you think of it? “I hope you will like the ‘O’Dowd’ I send. It is meant to expose a very common blunder respecting the influences of the better classes abroad. You must ensure the correction yourself, and it will be the last I shall forward this month. For the last week I have been keeping a dark room with a severe ophthalmia. It was a dreary time, and I am glad it is over. “Gladstone is going to propose a sort of Court of Arbitration for land purposes--that is, another body of men to be shot at when the peasants find landlords scarce, or what the sportsmen call ‘wild.’ “This Dalmatian revolt must sleep during the winter, but it will be a serious mischief yet, especially if this Franco-Russian alliance takes place. Our policy now ought to be to reconcile Austria and Prussia at once, and prepare for the big struggle that is coming to undo the results of the Crimean War. I wish, if it be decided to represent England abroad by old _women_, that at least they would send us old _ladies_.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Dec_. 14, 1860. “I hope for both our sakes you are not quite just about the ‘Pope’ O’D. I think it has a smack of Swift--a very faint one it may be, but still enough to recall the flavour. The anecdote of the Yankee was not made for the occasion, only it occurred to Sir J. Hudson, and not to O’Dowd. Take them all in all, I have done better and worse; but I think with those you have already on hand, they will make a fair batch. “I hope you will like the ‘Dr Temple’ O’D. It, at least, is worked out. “I am very poorly, and very low in spirits; my wife grows weaker every day, and our anxieties are great. For the first time in my life I find it a ‘grind’ to write a few lines. _Le commencement du fin_, maybe--who knows?” XX. TRIESTE 1870 _To Mr John Blackwood_. “Trieste, _Jan_. 4,1870. “When I saw ‘Maga’ without me I began to feel as if I had died (hitherto at Trieste I only believed I had been buried), and when your cheque reached me this morning I pictured myself as my own executor! You are most kind to bethink you of the necessities of this pleasant season,--indeed I scarcely know anything of Christmas but its bills I Still, I should be well content to have nothing heavier on my heart than money cares, and I believe that is about as dreary a confession as a man can well make.