“How lightly you talk of ten years! Why, I was thirty years younger ten years ago than I am to-day. I’d have ridden at a five-foot wall with more pluck than I can summon now at a steep staircase. But I own to you frankly, if I had known _you_ then as I do now, it might have wiped off some of this score of years. Even my daughters guess at breakfast when I have had a pleasant note from you. “I have thought over what you say about Garibaldi’s visit to Mazzini, and added a bit to tag to the article. I have thought it better to say nothing of Stansfield--I know him so little; and though I think him an ass, yet he might feel like the tenor who, when told, ‘Monsieur, vous chantez faux,’ replied, ‘Je le sais, monsieur, mais je ne veux pas qu’on me le dise.’ “Don’t cut out the Haymarket ladies if you can help it. The whole thing is very naughty, but it can’t be otherwise. I’ll try and carry it on a little farther. I have very grand intentions--more paving-stones for the place my hero comes from. “But ask Aytoun what he thinks of it, and if it be worth carrying out. The ‘Devil’s Tour’ would be better than ‘Congé.’ “The rhymes are often rough, but I meant them to be rugged lest it should be suspected I thought myself capable of verse--and I know better. “Do what you like about the Flynn P.S. Perhaps it will be best not to make more mention of the rascal. I must tell you some day of my own scene with him at Spezzia, which ‘The Telegraph’ fellow has evidently heard of.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Florence, _Monday_, April 18,1864. “On second thoughts I remembered how far easier it was always to me to make a new rod than to splice an old one, so I send you the Devil as he is. If ever the vein comes to me, I can take him up hereafter. Let Aytoun judge whether it be safe or wise to publish. I myself think that a bit of wickedness has always a certain gusto in good company, while amongst inferior folks it would savour of coarseness. This is too bleak an attempt at explaining what I mean, but you will understand me. “Last verse-- “For of course it lay heavily on his mind, And greatly distressed him besides, to find How these English had left him miles behind In this marvellous civilisation.” _To Mr John Blackwood_. “Casa Capponi, Florence, _April_ 30, 1864 “For the first time these eight days I have looked at my bottle--the ink-bottle--again. I am subject to periodical and very acute attacks of ‘doing-nothingness.’--it would be euphuism to call it idleness, which implies a certain amount of indulgence, but mine are dreary paroxysms of incapacity to do anything other than sleep and eat and grumble. “I wanted for the best of all possible reasons to be up and at work, and I could not. I tried to--but it wouldn’t do! At least I have found out it would be far better to do nothing at all than to do what would be so lamentably bad and unreadable.