“I send you enough to make the May ‘Sir Brook,’--at least it will be wellnigh a sheet. I am gaining, but slowly. My debility is excessive, partly from all the blood I have lost; but my head is free, and I think I could work better than usual if I had the strength for it. “All my thanks for your kindest of notes and the O’D. enclosure. I could not acknowledge them earlier, for I kept all my pen-power for the story. Try and let me have it back soon; and, meanwhile, I mean to change the air and go to Carrara. The doctors think that I must have patience, and abstain from all treatment for a while. It is evidently as hard to launch me (into the next world) as to get the _Northumberland_ afloat. I stick on the ‘ways,’ and the best they can say of me is that I have, up to this, received ‘no fatal damage.’ “I wish I was near enough to talk to you: my spirits are not bad, and when out of pain I enjoy myself much as usual. “What a fiasco the Derby party are making of the situation! At a time when it is all-important to conciliate the outlaying men of all parties they single them out for attack, as [? for example] Whiteside’s stupid raid against Sir Robert Peel for the escape of Stephens. There never was a party in which the man-of-the-world element was so lamentably omitted.... “After all, it is a party without a policy, and they have to play the game like the fellows one sees punting at Baden, who, when they win a Louis, change it at once and go off to the silver table.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, Florence, _April_ 16,1866. “It was a great relief to my mind to know that ‘Sir B.’ was up to the mark, as your note tells me, for I felt so shaken by illness that very little would have persuaded me the whole craft was going to pieces; and all they said to me _here_ I took as mere encouragement, though, sooth to say, my home critics do not usually spoil me by flatteries. I am better, but not on the right road somehow. I am deplorably weak, and my choice seems to be between debility and delirium tremens, for to keep up my strength I drink claret all day long. “How the Conservatives must have misplayed the game! To show the Ministry the road out of the blunder was as stupid a move as ever was made, and yet it is what they have done. They ought, besides, to have widened their basis at once by making Lord Stanley a _pont du diable_ to reach Lowe and Horsman. There is a current hypocrisy in English public opinion--about admitting new men--sharing the sweets of office and such like. Why not cultivate it? “From men who ought to know, I am told war is _certain_ between Prussia and Austria. “There is a rumour here that Italy offered terms to Austria for the cession of Venice, even to the extent of troops! It is hard to believe it. The Austrian alliance, if it were possible, would be the crowning policy of Italy and the only barrier against France; but national antipathies are hard to deal with, and here they are positively boundless.”