“The best thing the war has done for Italy is the knocking over a score of false gods--that graven image La Marmora and their clay idol Persano especially. This was, _par excellence_, the land of sham mock heroes, mock statesmen, mock publicists, and mock patriots. Even the engineers were humbugs, for when they made a tunnel for the Lucca railroad they could not make the two sides meet, and went on working in parallel lines till something fell in and showed one where they were! “To pick your best Bramah with an old nail; to know what you say at your dinner-table without the faintest acquaintance with the language you are talking; to read your thoughts by the expression of your face as you glance at them; and to ‘sell’ you at every moment and turn of your existence, I’ll back them against Europe,--but there end their gifts! For the common work and wear of daily life they are too sharp and too cunning, and you might as well improvise a Cabinet Council from Pentonville or Brixton as make up a Ministry of such materials. But for the love of mercy keep all this to yourself. “There is a story that Hudson has been offered the Embassy here. Would to God it were true! I’d defy the devil and all his bores with one such fellow in my neighbourhood. There’s more champagne in him--dry and sweet--than in all Mme. Cliquot’s cellars, and he is as good as he is able and clever. “The Tories would do more by such an appointment than by gaining ten votes in the House, ay, fifty. I think they seem to use their patronage, up to this, very wisely: these Irish appointments are certainly good. There is one man of merit they appear to have forgotten, it is true; but I am told he is not impatient, and this is the better for him, as his virtue may probably be put to a long and trying test. “Do you know Phil Rose of the Carlton? He is coming out to see me here next week. He is sure to have all the Conservative gossip (he used to have all the patronage once, which was better). He once (in ‘59) offered me an [? Australian post] with £1200 a-year, and gave it, on my refusing, to Ed. Disraeli, Ben’s brother. I declined from pure fear. I understood I should have to hold and account for large sums, and as I knew how incapable I was in rendering an account of the few half-crowns entrusted to me, I saw that if I accepted I should probably finish my literary career in the Swan river. Still, I have occasional misgivings at my cowardly rejection, for I might have died before they detected me. “Do you see that that ungrateful rascal Cook has taken up the hint in my late O’D. and organised an excursion to ‘Liberated Venice’?