“Lytton and I talked a great deal of you and drank your health. We often wished you were with us. He is immensely improved--I mean mentally,--and become one of the very best talkers I ever met, and not a shade of any affectation about him. I am convinced he will make a great career yet. “‘Our Quacks’ is, I think, a better title. Decide yourself.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Dec_. 11, 1871. “I was indeed surprised at the address of your letter, but I should have been more than surprised--overjoyed--had I seen yourself, and I am sorely sorry you did not come on here. Do let it be for another time, and ask Mrs Blackwood to have a craving desire to see Venice and the Titians, and take me as an accident of the road. “I am getting too ill for work, but not for the pleasure of seeing my friends, and there is nothing does me the same good. “I see no difficulty in writing to you about Austria, but not as O’Dowd,--gravely, soberly, and, if I could, instructingly. But I must wait for a little health and a little energy, or I should be only steaming with half-boiler power. “I see little prospect now of getting better, and all I have to do is to scramble along with as much of health as remains to me, and not bore my friends or myself any more on the matter. Sending the divers down to report how thin my iron plating is, is certainly not the way to encourage me to a new voyage. “Like a kind fellow, send me George Eliot’s new book. There is nothing like her.” XXII. TRIESTE 1872 _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Jan_. 31, 1872. “I am ordered off to Fiume for change of air--the change of scene that is to affect me is somewhat farther. Before I go I send you two O’Ds. that have been under my hands these few weeks back. Whether they be print-worthy or not, you will know and decide; if so, I shall be back to correct and add another by the time a proof could reach me. “I am in a very creaky condition, and why I hold together at all I don’t understand. Like the _Megæra_, all the attempts to stop the leak only widens the breach.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Feb_. 15, 1872. “It was an angel from heaven suggested to your wife the thought of a run out here. Only come and I’ll go with you to Japan if you like. There are no two people in the world I should rather see, and though the place is a poor one and I a dull dog, the thought of seeing you here would brighten us both up, as the mere notion has cheered me already.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Trieste, _Feb_. 26, 1872. “I send you (and thus early to be in time for next month) a short sketchy story which, as the man said of the Athanasian Creed, is founded on fact, but not the better (I mean the story) for that. “It has a moral too, or rather several morals, to be distributed according to age and sex, and, in fact, is a ‘righte merrie’ and well conceived tale, as I hope you will tell me.