“I set off for my post immediately, and hope that a new place, new situation, and new people may rally me out of my dreariness. Austrian politics, like Scotch law, confound one by the very names they give things; and I lose all pleasure in a trial when the plaintiff is called the ‘Promovent’! I know it will be many a day before I resign myself to believe that ‘Reichsrath’ means a council: it looks and sounds so like a tonic bitter. Still, I am going in for a strong acquaintance with Austria and Austrians, and mean to give up Italy when I cross the frontier. “If Newdigate had not been such a good fellow I’d have liked to have quizzed him about his absurd speech concerning the Irish Catholics. It is hard to understand men so imbued with prejudice and yet mixing with the world. And as to Cardinal Cullen’s red stocking, why, good God! have we not seen the West Kent Rifles or the Dorset Fusiliers strutting about Paris in knickerbockers and cross belts, and there was no more thought of imitation in the one case than Papal supremacy in the other. Rome derives immense power and prestige from our unreasonable jealousy of her influence. The Prussians are far wiser: they ignore all cause of offence altogether, and outflank the priests in this way.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Hôtel de la Petri, Trieste, _March_ 24,1867. “Your packet with proof followed me to Vienna, into Hungary, and at length caught me here this morning--I need not say, too late for correction. I have had what Yankees call ‘a fine time,’ and talked myself hoarse in strange tongues; but I have seen strange men and cities, and, on the whole, filled my head while emptying my pocket. I have stories for you when we meet, and I trust that might be soon. “As to my new post--_keep the confession purely to yourself_---it is unpleasant, damnable. There is nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing to live in, no one to speak to. Liverpool, with Jews and blacklegs for gentlemen--_voilà tout_. “It was a veritable leap in the dark, and I hesitated long whether it might not be best to pitch it to the devil who made it and go on penny-a-lining to the end; but Lord Bloomfield, our Ambassador at Vienna, who really took to me, persuaded me to hold on for a while at least, and I have _asked_ for, and _got_, three months’ leave, during which time I must either try and get some change or poison myself. “All this avowal--made, as you may believe, neither willingly nor pleasantly--is made to you alone of all my friends, for I am heartily ashamed of myself for getting into such a scrape and talking rather mysteriously about my good-luck, &c., which is pretty much like a man’s boasting at being transported for life. Trieste means no books, no writing, no O’D., no leave nor go of any kind, but moral death, and d------n too.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, Florence, _April_ 6,1867.