“Sydney and her man are at the Burlington, and well too--also their mother,--and can get you every detail of the journey _via_ whichever route you take. I think you are right to come by Germany and go back by Italy, though it be against the precepts of climate, but that Germany after Italy is like following a strawberry ice with sauerkraut. I think ‘Just like Rye’ will be the best title for the ‘O’Dowd,’ and ‘taking’ as well as appropriate. Rose is still at Constantinople, I believe, trying to get the tobacco monopoly from the Government,--a huge affair of some millions sterling. “The weather up to this was splendid here; now it has become ‘more Irish and less nice,’ and I fancy is one of the reasons of my maladies. One loves to lean on such subtleties, like the alderman who ascribed his health to his always having a strawberry in his wine-glass.” XXIII. LOOKING BACKWARDS 1871-1872 [The autobiographical and bibliographical notes which Lever arranged to supply for a new edition of his novels were written during the latter part of 1871 and the spring of 1872. Unfortunately he did not live to complete the intended series of prefaces. They disclose highly interesting and amusing glimpses of his career and opinions, and they contain very open confessions of his loose literary methods, as well as some acute criticisms of his writings.] ‘HARRY LORREQUER.’ That some thirty years after the sketches which form this volume were written I should be called upon to revise and re-edit them is strange enough to me, well remembering, as I do, with what little hope of permanence they were penned, how lightly they were undertaken, and how carelessly thrown together. But there is something still stranger in the retrospect, and that is, that these same papers--for originally they were contributed to ‘The Dublin University Magazine’--should mainly have directed the course of my future life, and decided my entire career. I may quote from a former preface that I was living in a very secluded spot when I formed the idea of jotting down these stories, many of them heard in boyhood, others constructed out of real incidents that occurred to my friends in travel, and some again--‘The Adventures of Trevanion’ and ‘The French Duellist,’ for instance--actual facts, well known to many who had formed part of the army of occupation in France. To give what consistency I might to a mass of incongruous adventure, to such a variety of strange situations befalling one individual, I was obliged to imagine a character, which probably my experiences--and they were not very mature at the time--assured me as being perfectly possible: one of a strong will and a certain energy, rarely persistent in purpose and perpetually the sport of accident, with a hearty enjoyment of the pleasure of the hour, and a very reckless indifference as to the price to be paid for it. If I looked out on my acquaintances, I believed I saw