“I begin this at midnight, the first cool moment of the twenty-four hours, to finish to-morrow some time before post hour. I see that you have learned our disaster here already--a sore blow, too, to a young army: but _que voulez-vous?_ La Marmora is an ass, with a small head and a large face like Packington. You might make a first lord of him, but never a general. The attack of the first division had never been intended to do more than draw out the Austrians and encourage the belief that the _grand_ attack was to follow: meanwhile Cialdini was to have crossed the Po and moved on Rovigo. The blundering generals made a real movement of it, and got a real thrashing for their pains. The division was all but cut to pieces. They fought well--there’s no doubt of it; they even bore beating, which is more than one would have said of them. The king was twice surrounded and all but made prisoner, and the princes behaved splendidly. “It is a great misfortune that they should have met a repulse at first. I say this because they _must_ have Venice, and I think the great thing is that they should have it without French intervention. I hope if the Conservatives come in that they will see this, and see that Italy cannot go back without being a French province. If we have a policy at all,--sometimes I doubt it,--it is to prevent or _delay_ French aggrandisement. That stupid bosh of volunteer soldiering has so bemuddled English brains that they fancy we have an army. Why, a costermonger with his donkey might as well talk of his ‘steed.’ I wouldn’t say this to a foreigner, nor let them say it to _me_, but it’s true. If we could patch up the Italian quarrel and get Venice for them, and arrange an alliance between Italy and Austria, we should do more than by following the lead of Louis Napoleon and playing ‘cad’ to him through Europe. “Are the Derbys really coming in? Who will be F. Secretary? I was going to say, ‘Who wants me?’ “I was thinking of keeping a running comment on the war in ‘O’Dowd,’ the events jotted as they occurred, with such remarks as suggested themselves--a hotch-potch of war, morals, politics, &c. What think you? Of course, with a certain seriousness; it is no joking matter, in any view one takes of it. “What a wonderful book ‘Felix Holt’ is! I read much of it twice over, some of it three times, and throughout there is a restrained power--a latent heat--far greater than anything developed. She at least suggests to _me_ that her _dernier mot_ is not there on _anything_. It is not a pleasant book as to the effect on the mind when finished; but you cannot forget it, and you cannot take up another after it. It is years since anything I read has taken the same hold upon me.