“Sydney’s marriage comes off Monday 21st. I am forced to say, like King Frederic of Prussia, ‘Another such victory would ruin me.’ To be sent to one’s grave by milliners does seem a very ignoble destiny!--but a bad bronchitis, aided by Brussels lace, has brought me to a state of feverish irritability that, if it does not terrify me, certainly alarms my family, and _con ragione_.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _March_ 3,1870. “Perhaps you’ll say ‘dull as ditch water’ was the inspiration as well as the title of this ‘O’Dowd/ and mayhap I won’t deny it. It is, however, a heartfelt cry over the dreariness of the time the ‘whole world over,’ and I am sure many will acknowledge the truth of it. “I know nobody jolly but Sydney. She writes me full accounts of Venetian Carnival doings,--masques and gondoliers, &c, &c., and music on the Grand Canal till daybreak. “Here I am hipped and out of heart,--waiting, too, but for the undertaker, I believe, for it is the only ‘carriage exercise’ I should now care for. “We had two smart shocks of earthquake yesterday. I thought that Cumming was going to be right after all, but it passed off with nothing worse than some tinkling of the teacups and a formidable swinging of the lustre over our heads.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _March_ 6, 1870. “The Whigs would like to blend up Fenianism and agrarian crime. _Now they are not to be so confounded_. The National party is anti-English, rebel, violent, cruel, anything you like, but the men _who shoot the landlords are not the Fenians!_ It is a brief I should like well to plead on, and you will see ere long that there will be many to acknowledge its truth. “Gladstone will carry his Bill, I’m sure, but if the Tories are adroit they will make a complete schism in the Irish party and throw the Catholic set so completely on the side of the Ministry as to disgust the Protestant feeling of England. How I wish I had half an hour with Dizzy, and that he would condescend to listen to me!” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “March 15, 1870. “I was glad to hear from you, and gladder to hear you liked the O’Ds. “Sydney is away to Rome honeymooning it very pleasantly, and meeting all manner of attentions, &c. The trousseau has spoilt my trip to town. I have ‘taken out’ in white lace what I meant for ‘whitebait,’ and I must try and screw on in life for one year more if I mean to see London again. It was the celebrated Betty O’Dwyer that said to her legs, ‘I’ll take another season out of you before I’ll give you to Tom O’Callaghan.’” _To Mr William Blackwood._ “_March_ 16,1870.