“Supply the date of the Reform Bill for me in the ‘New Hansard.’” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Casa Capponi, Florence, _May_ 10, 1864. “Herewith go three chapters of ‘Tony.’ With the best will in the world there are days when our dinners go off ill, our sherry is acrid, our _entrées_ cold, and our jests vapid. Heaven grant (but I have my misgivings) that some such fatality may not be over these ‘Tonys.’ My home committee likes them better than I do; I pray heartily that _you_ be of _this_ mind. “I shall be fretful and anxious till I hear from you about T. B., but I go off to-morrow to Spezzia, and not to be back till Wednesday the 18th,--all Consular, all Bottomry, all Official for eight mortal days, but “Of course I must show to the office ‘I’m here,’ And draw with good conscience two hundred a-year. I’d save fifty more, but of _that_ I am rid well By the agency charges of Allston and Bidwell.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Florence, _May_ 15,1864. “More power to you! as we say in Ireland, for your pleasant letter. I have got it, and I send you an O’D. I think you will like on ‘Our Masterly Inactivity,’ and another on ‘Our Pensions for Colonial Governors.’ “As to next month’s O’D., I don’t know what will turn up; but [I am] like poor old Drury--the clergyman at Brussels--whose profound reliance on Providence once so touched an English lady that it moved her to tears. ‘He uttered,’ said she--telling the story to Sir H. Seymour, who told it to me--‘he uttered one of the most beautiful sentiments I ever heard from the lips of a Christian: “When I have dined heartily and well, and drunk my little bottle of light Bordeaux, Mrs S.,” said he, “where Mrs Drury or the children are to get _their_ supper to-night or their breakfast to-morrow, I vow to God I don’t know, _and I don’t care_.”’ Now if that be not as sweet a little bit of hopeful trust in manna from heaven as one could ask for, I’m a Dutchman, and I lay it to my heart that somehow, somewhere, O’Dowderies will turn up for July as they have done for June, for I shall certainly need them. You will have had T. B. before this. I see you are stopping at my old ‘Gite,’ the Burlington, my hotel ever since I knew London. There was an old waiter there, Foster,--I remember him nigh thirty years,--who exercised towards me a sort of parental charge, and rebuked my occasional late hours and the light companions who laughed overmuch at breakfast with me in the coffee-room. If he is _in vivente_, remember me to him.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Florence, _May_ 16,1864.