“How I would like now if I had the time (but it would take time and labour too) to write an article on the deception which the Whigs have practised in trading on their Italian policy as their true claim to office. It is the most rascally fraud ever practised.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, _Oct_. 29, 1865. “I send you two O’Ds.; that on Gladstone I think tolerably good. The short paper on ‘The Horse,’ being all done in the first person, I think had better be an ‘O’Dowd,’--indeed I signed it such; but do as you like about this. “I think there seems a very good prospect of the Tories coming in during the session. Phil Rose was here the other day and gave me good hopes, and said also they would certainly give me _something_. Heaven grant it! for I am getting very footsore, and would like to fall back upon a do-nothing existence, and never hear more of the public. “The foreign papers are all--especially the Bonapartist ones--attacking Lord Russell as an ‘Orleanist.’ I never had heard of his leanings in that direction; but it is exactly one of those tendencies we should _not_ hear of in England, but which foreigners would be certain to chance upon.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, _Friday, Nov. 3_, 1866. “I am rather out of spirits,--indeed I feel that my public and myself are at cross-purposes. “D------ their souls--(God forgive me)--but they go on repeating some stone-cold drollery of old Pam’s, and my fun--hot and piping--is left un-tasted; and as to wisdom, I’ll back O’Dowd against all the mock aphorisms of Lord Russell and his whole Cabinet. It would not do to touch Palmerston in O’D.: I could not go on the intensely laudatory tack, and any--the very slightest--qualification of praise would be ill taken. Do you know the real secret of P.’s success? It was, that he never displayed ambition till he was a rich man. Had Disraeli reserved himself in the same degree, there would have been nothing of all the rotten cant of ‘adventurer,’ &c., that we now hear against him. _Begin_ life rich in England, and all things will be added to you.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, Florence, _Nov._ 6,1865. “I think the Bagmen deserve an ‘O’Dowd’; their impertinent wine discussion is too much to bear. I don’t suspect the general public will dislike seeing them lashed, and from the specimens I have met travelling, I owe some of the race more than I have given them. “I think there is a good chance of a (short-lived) Conservative Government next year, and then Gladstone and _le Déluge_. Unless some great change resolves the two parties in the House into real open enemies (not camps where deserters cross and recross any day), we shall have neither political honesty nor good government. “The present condition of things makes a lukewarm public and disreputable politicians.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, Florence, _Nov_. 11, 1866.