“In reply to your note, and its enclosure referring to a passage in one of my late ‘O’Dowds’ that an admiral is a sort of human rhinoceros, &c., I have simply to say that the joke is a very sorry one, and one of the worst I have ever uttered, if it give offence; but I most distinctly declare that I never entertained the most distant idea of a personality. Indeed my whole allusion was to the externals of admirals,--a certain gruffness, &c., which in itself is much too superficial a trait to include a personality. “That I could say anything offensive to or of a service from which I have received nothing but politeness and courtesy, and some of whose members I regard as my closest and best friends, seems so impossible a charge against me that I know not how to answer it. Indeed nothing is left for me but a simple denial of intention. It then remains, perhaps, to apologise for an expression which may be misapprehended. I do so just as frankly. I think the men who so read me, read me _wrongfully_. No matter; my fault it is that I should be open to such misconstruction, and I ask to be forgiven for it. “So much of reparation is in my power (if time permit), and I would ask you to assist me to it--to omit the entire passage when you republish the papers in a volume. “Will you, in any form that you think best, convey the explanation and the amends to the writer of the note you have enclosed?” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, Florence, _Dec._ 4, 1866. “I have just read the note you enclosed me calling my attention to my having said that an admiral was a sort of ‘human rhinoceros.’ I beg to recant the opinion, and when opportunity serves I will do so publicly, and declare that I believe them to be the most thin-skinned of mortals, otherwise there was nothing in the paragraph referred to which could give the slightest offence. “To impute a personality to it would be for the reader to attach the passage to some one to whom he thought it applicable, if there be such. “When they mentioned vice or bribe, It’s so pat to all the tribe, Each cried that was levelled at me. “Now I had not the vaguest idea of a personality; I was simply chronicling a sort of professional gruffness and mysteriousness,--both admirable in the way of discipline, doubtless, but not so agreeable socially as the gifts of younger and less responsible men. “Omit the whole passage, however, when you republish the papers; and accept my assurance that if ever I mention an admiral again, I will insert the word ‘bishop’ in my MS., and only correct it with the proof. “It is not easy to be serious in replying to such a charge of ‘doing something prejudicial to the service.’ There is no accounting, however, for phraseology, as Mr Carter called the loss of his right eye ‘a domestic calamity.’ “Once more, I never meant offence. I never went within a thousand miles of a personality; and if ever I mention the sea-service again, I hope I may be in it.