_To Dr Burbidge_ “Florence, _Friday, April_ 1866. “My thanks for your most kind note. My attack was only a ‘runaway knock’ after all I believe when the _pallida mors_ does come, he gives a summons that there’s no mistaking. But I was only ill enough to suggest to _myself_ the way by which I might become worse, and now it’s all over. “I cannot make up my mind about the house till I go down and see in what state I receive it. There is, I suspect, _very_ little furniture; but I mean to see, and decide soon, if I can. I assure you I look on £90 for a very poor quarter in a very poor place as a large rent, though you do persist in knocking my head off on account of my extravagance, which is a mere tradition, and you might as well bring up against me my idleness at school. The worst is, I used formerly to make money as easily as I spent it. I now find a great disinclination to work--that is, I am well aware, an expression for a disability.” _To Dr Burbidge._ “Casa Capponi, Florence, _Thursday, May_ 1866. “By a telegram from Sanders, received too late to reply to by post yesterday, I learned that our funds had amounted to sixty-five pounds, and I accordingly wrote to ‘My Lord’ to state as much, and also that the congregation, alike in grateful recognition of the gratuitously afforded services of Doctor Burbidge, as in the very fullest desire to secure his services, had appointed him to the chaplaincy,--a nomination which, in the event of any subsidy from the F. Office, they earnestly hoped his lordship would confirm. “I believe I said it in rather choice phrase, but that was the substance, and I am very hopeful that he will do all that we ask. “My wife had another attack of the _rigor_ and fever yesterday, and Wilson apprehends some tertian character has inserted itself into the former illness. She is very ill indeed, so much so that although my married daughter is confined to bed and seriously ill at a hotel only a few hundred yards off, Julia cannot leave the house to see her. You see how impossible it would be for me to be away. “I write very hurriedly, but I wished you to know that all, so far as we can do it, is now done, and if F. O. will only be as gracious as I hope, we shall have accomplished our great wish, and the Spezzia chaplaincy be a fact.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Florence, _May_ 2, 1866. “Herewith goes the next ‘Sir B.’ I was very glad indeed to get your last few lines, for I am low, low! I can’t pick up, somehow. But I don’t want to bore you with myself or _mes maux_. “So they won’t resign! I think, on the whole, it’s as well,--I mean, that seeing what sort of composite thing a new Government must be, and how the Whigs have been beaten by a ‘byblow’--not in a fair fight by the regular Opposition,--it’s better to wait and see.