“Send me the Horse-book of your Cavalry Officer, and I’ll try and make a short notice of it. I want the book of Villa Architecture too. I was thinking of a paper (I have good bones for it) on the Italian fleet, wood and iron, but I foresee that I should say so many impertinent things, and hurt so many people I know, that I suspect on the whole it is better not to go on with it. What I am to do with my surplus venom when I close ‘O’Dowd’ I don’t see, except I go into the Church and preach on the Athanasian Creed. “Wolff is in Paris still, scheming in ‘Turks.’ “It will astonish Lyons when he discovers what a heritage Bulwer has left him at Constantinople.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 20, 1866. “Your note and its ‘padding’ came to my hand a couple of hours ago. I thank you much for both, but more for the encouragement than the cash, though I wanted the last badly. “I don’t think there is a public for O’D. collectively. I don’t think people will take more than a monthly dose of ‘my bitters,’ and I incline to suspect mawkish twaddle and old Joe Millers would hit the mark better. Shall I try? _At all events, make room if you can for the postscript I send you. Now I wrote it at your own suggestion when I read your note_, and it seems to me to embody the dispute. I have tried to put in a bit of Swift s tart dryness in the style. “The telegram just announces Palmerston’s death. Take care that his name does not occur in my last O’D. I don’t remember using it, but look to it for me. “What will happen now? I hear the Whigs won’t have Russell, and that he won’t serve under Clarendon. “How I wish I were in England to hear all the talk. It is d------d hard to be chained up here and left only to bark, when I want to bite too.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 23,1865. “Does it not strike you that a good view of Palmerston’s character might be taken from considering how essentially the man was English, and that in no other assembly than a British House of Commons would his qualities have had the same sway and influence? All that intense vitality and rich geniality would have been totally powerless in Austria, France, Italy, or even America. None would have accepted the glorious nature of the man, or the element of statesmanship, as the House accepted it. None would have seen that the spirit of all he did was the rebound of that public opinion which only a genial man ever feels or knows the value of. If I be right in this, depend upon it Gladstone will make a lame successor to him. God grant it! “I send you a ‘Sir B.’ for December, as I am about to leave for Carrara for a few days. I hope it is good. It may be that another short chapter may be necessary, and if so there will be time for it when I come back.