“I am glad you like my views in O’D. I feel sure they are correct. Curiously enough, the O’D. will just fit in with the sentiments declared by Lord Derby, both regarding America and Europe. It is very hard to write patiently of the Italians just now, their exigence rising with every new success of Prussia, totally forgetful of the fact that to the Alliance they have brought nothing as yet but discomfiture and defeat. Every charge of a Prussian squadron raises their demands, and every Prussian bulletin enlarges their cries for more frontier! What a people! and yet one must not say _a word_ of this; one must back them up and wish God-speed and the rest of it, for there is a worse thing, after all, than a bumptious Italy,--an insolent and aggressive France. “Garibaldi is at his wits’ end with the scoundrels they have given him to command. About eighty per cent of them should be at the galley. He is ready to throw up his command any day, and nothing but urgent entreaty induces him to remain. “There will be great difficulty in getting the Italians to accept a reasonable amount of territory with Venice. They always regard whatever is given generously as something far below their just claim; and if you want to make an Italian cabman miserable, pay him double and be civil at parting, and he will go off with the affecting impression that he _might have_ had _five_ times as much out of you if he had only stood to it. I know them well: they are d------d bad Irish--Irish minus all generosity and all gratitude. “I have come back in great mind after a week’s swimming. I believe if I could live at Spezzia I might rival Methuselah.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, Florence, _Aug_. 13, 1866. “I was very glad to see the part which I now return corrected, fearing that some mischance had befallen it. I hope you like it: I am eager to hear what your impression of the whole tale is on looking back over it. “If I thought it was of the least consequence to you I would not dun you, but I want money. I am in a difficulty about a large--that is, for me, a large--bill due on the 25th, the last of those debts I once told you of, and with this I end them. “I am writing hard at ‘Sir B.,’ and hope the ending will come right. My home advisers say ‘Yes.’ “The character of Mrs Sewell was a great difficulty--that is, the attempt to show how mere gracefulness could appear something better, and that a woman might be as depraved as a man without forfeiting to a great extent our sympathy and even something stronger. “Have I succeeded? I don’t know, nor do I know if any one will take the trouble to see what I have aimed at. “I wrote this epigram on the loss of the _Affondatore_, and it has some vogue here:-- “Al Affondatore. “Ta meritai bene il tuo nome strano, Se non i nemici: Affondersi Pereano. Or in doggerel-- “To the Sinker.