I assure you, Tom, the way she used to come in of a morning to ask me how I was, and how I passed the night; her graceful stoop to kiss me; her tender little caressing twaddle, as if I was a small child to be bribed into black-bottle by sugar-candy,--were as good as a play. The little extracts, too, that she made from the newspapers to amuse me were all from that interesting column called fashionable intelligence, and the movements in fashionable life, as if it amused me to hear who Lady Jemima married, and who gave away the bride. Cary knew better what I cared for, and told me about the harvest and the crops, and the state of the potatoes, with now and then a spice of the foreign news, whenever there was anything remarkable. To all appearance, we are not far from a war; but where it 's to be, and with whom, is hard to say. There 's no doubt but fighting is a costly amusement; and I believe no country pays so heavily for her fun in that shape as England; but, nevertheless, there is nothing would so much tend to revive her drooping and declining influence on the Continent as a little brush at sea. She is, I take it, as good as certain to be victorious; and the very fervor of the enthusiasm success would evoke in England would go far to disabuse the foreigner of his notion that we are only eager about printing calicoes, and sharpening Sheffield ware. Believe me, it is vital to us to eradicate this fallacy; and until the world sees a British fleet reeling up the Downs with some half-dozen dismasted line-of-battle ships in their wake, they 'll not be convinced of what you and I know well,--that we are just the same people that fought the Nile and Trafalgar. Those Industrial Exhibitions, I think, brought out a great deal of trashy sentimentality about universal brotherhood, peace, and the rest of it. I suppose the Crystal Palace rage was a kind of allegory to show that they who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones; but our ships, Tom,--our ships, as the song says, are "hearts of oak"! Here's Cary again, and with a confounded cupful of something green at top and muddy below! Apothecaries are filthy distillers all the world over, and one never knows the real blessing of health till one has escaped from their beastly brewings. Good-night. Saturday Morning. A regular Italian morning, Tom, and such a view! The mists are swooping down the Alps, and showing cliffs and crags in every tint of sunlit verdure. The lake is blue as a dark turquoise, reflecting the banks and their hundred villas in the calm water. The odor of the orange-flower and the oleander load the air, and, except my vagabonds under the window, there is not an element of the picture devoid of interest and beauty. There they are as usual; one of them has his arm in a bloody rag, I perceive, the consequence of a row last night,--at least, Paddy Byrne saw a fellow wiping his knife and washing his bands in the lake--very suspicious circumstances--just as he was going to bed.