“Here has just come news that General Chiera has been shot by court-martial for treason, having betrayed the Italian plans to the Austrians. What next? The Neapolitans have earned a dark fame for themselves in all their late history. I don’t know yet if the story is authentic. “I have little confidence in the Tories’ hold of office, and I have less still that they will do anything for me, though there is scarcely a man of the Party who has not given me pledges or assurances of remembrance. “Malmesbury will, I hear, go to Ireland, and he will _do_ there. There is not a people in the world who can vie with the Irish in their indifference to _real_ benefits, and their intense delight in _mock_ ones! When will you Saxons learn how to govern Ireland? When you want a treaty with King Hoolamaldla in Africa, you approach him not with a tariff and a code of reduced duties, but with strings of beads, bell-wire, and brass buttons, and why won’t you see that Ireland can be had by something cheaper than Acts of Parliament! “And my old friend Whiteside is to [be] Chief-Justice if Baron Lendrick (I mean Lefroy) will consent to retire! It is a grand comment on our judicial system, that when a man is too old for public life he is always young enough for the Bench. “They once thought of putting me forward for Trinity Col. If I were ten years younger and ten pounds richer, I’d like to try my chance. I think I could do the light-comedy line in the House better than Bernai Osborne, and I’d like to _say_, before I die, some of the things that I now can only write.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, Florence, _July_ 2,1866. “This Italian defeat was even worse than we thought it: the loss of men was tremendous, and a great number of officers were killed. Of course there are all sorts of stories of treason, treachery, &c,--nothing Italian ever happens without these; but I believe the whole mishap was bad generalship, a rash over-confidence, and a proportionate contempt for the Austrians, whom they believed to be all inferior troops, the best being sent to the north under Benedek. “You are not likely to have any very accurate information in England, as La Marmora positively refuses to permit newspaper writers to accompany the army; and Hardman, though known to him, fares no better than the rest. “I have learned, from what I know to be a good source of information, that the French mean to come in at once if the next battle be unfavourable to the Italians. This is the worst thing that can happen. It seals the vassalage of this people to France, and places the question of Rome and the Pope for ever out of Italian hands and in those of their ‘magnanimous ally,’ whom may God confound! Ricasoli sees this plainly enough; but what can he do, or where turn him for aid?