“I hope to Heaven it is good. If you knew how I have laboured to fancy myself in a love-making mood,--if you knew by what drains on my _memory_--on my imagination--I have tried to believe a young damsel in my arms and endeavoured to make the sweet moment profitable,--you’d pity me. Perhaps a page of notices of what became of Mait-land, M’Caskey, &c, is necessary, though I’m of the Irishman’s opinion, ‘that when we know Jimmy was hanged, we don’t want to hear who got his corduroys.’ “Do you give me _your_ opinion, however, and God grant it be favourable! for I’m dead-beat,--gouty, doubty, and damnably blue-devilled into the bargain.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 23,1864. “The Israelite whose letter you enclose seems to be without brains as well as ‘guile.’ Couldn’t his stolid stupidity distinguish between a story thrown out as an ‘illustration’ and a ‘fact’? Couldn’t he see that the article was a paradox throughout, written merely to sustain the one grain of doubt that reformatories were not all that their advocates think them to be? “On my oath, I believe that the British Public is the dreariest piece of ‘bull-headed one-sidedness’ that exists. He has added another sting to my gout that nothing short of kicking him would relieve me of.... “Wolff is so much more absurd than stiff that I am ashamed of _my_ man. His directorial-financial vein is about the broadest farce I know of, and all the while that he invents companies and devises share-lists, he has not that amount of arithmetic that can make up the score at whist! “Labouchere is here now, and tortures the unlucky W. unceasingly. “I hope you will sustain me in all my perjuries about ‘Tony.’ I told W. yesterday that _you_ positively refused to tell me the author, and my own guess was that it was Mr Briggs, who was murdered.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, _Nov_. 26, 1864. “I will certainly do the ‘Directors.’ Wolff will do for what artists call the ‘lay figure,’ and I’ll put any drapery on him that I fancy. “I think the loss of Lord Derby would be little short of the smash of the party--I mean, at this moment. Indeed his social position and his standing with the Queen were just as valuable to his friends as his great abilities, and to be led in the House of Lords by Lord Malmesbury is more than the party could stand. “I remember once, when asked by Lord Lyndhurst what line I would suggest for a Conservative press--it was in ‘52--and I said, ‘As much _sense_, my lord, as your party will bear.’ ‘That will do it. I understand, and I agree with you.’