“A few days ago, and even his own papers declared Lord R. was rushing to his ruin; but the Conservatives cried out ‘Take care!’ and he has listened to the warning. A mere franchise reform must have inevitably wrecked him. The very carrying it would have been a success that must have been worse than any defeat. I don’t think that men so inept as the Tories deserve power, and I’m sure they could not retain it if they got it. “I hear Mill was a failure, and I own I’m not sorry. I hate the men he belongs to, either in letters or politics. Bright was certainly good. It was Bow-wow! but still a very good Bow-wow!--better than the polished platitudes of Gladstone, which the world accepts as philosophy. “But confound their politics. I send you ‘B. F.,’ and I send it early, because I want the proof back as soon as you can. I am going to idle, but whether at Rome or across to Sardinia, or only over to Elba, I have not decided. I am hipped and want some change,--the real malady being I’m growing old, and don’t like it, and revenge my own stupidity by thinking the people I meet insupportably dull and tiresome.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, Florence, _Feb_. 6, 1866. “I begin a short note to you now that I have just got back, full sure that I shall have to acknowledge one from you before I finish. “I am glad to see ‘The Times’ extract largely from the ‘Two Rebellions.’ The Jamaica affair, I hear, will be the _acrimonious_ fight of the session. What I am told is that the country will stand at present no Ministry of which Gladstone is not a part, and that if Lord R. goes (as he may), it must be some patchwork of Stanley, Gladstone, and some mild members of the Conservative party. One thing I am _assured_ is certain,--Gladstone is far less liberal than he was. “I own I am more puzzled than enlightened by all this, but I give it as I get it. “Jamaica is a bad business. Had they lynched Gordon it would have been all right; but the mock justice was dreadful! Besides, it really pushes High Churchism too far to hang a man because he has not attended a vestry. “The post is in, and no letter from you. No matter! I meant to idle to-day; and so I’ll stroll into Florence and gossip at the Legation, where I can post you the three ‘O’Dowds’ I have done for next month,--a short paper, but perhaps long enough. I wrote ‘The Tiger’ under the infliction of a d------d old Indian, who’ll kill _me_ if this paper doesn’t kill _him_. “Do you know anything of a new magazine which Cholmondeley Pennell is going to edit? Bulwer and Browning are, I believe, in his interest. He writes me a long yarn about it, but I think he has too many poets on his list for success. “It struck me last night what a good _Noctes_ might be made out of your corps,--with Lytton, Hamley, Oliphant, and O’Dowd all talking after their several ways. Wouldn’t it be a rare bit of fun?