I have the papers. I am much the better for some things in them. There's to be the universal suffrage, the withdrawal of troops, whatever I wanted. Cavour's despatch to the Swiss is also excellent. Those injured martyrs wanted the bone in their teeth, that's all. The wailing in England for Swiss and Savoyards, while other nationalities are to be trodden under foot without intervention, except what's called _aggression_, is highly irritating to me. Dearest Isa, Robert tore me from my last sentence to you. I was going to say that I cared less for the attacks of the press on my book than I care for your sympathy. Thank you for feeling 'mad' for me. But be sane again. Dear, it's not worth being mad for. In the advertised 'Blackwood,' do you see an article called 'Poetic Aberration'? It came into my head that it might be a stone thrown at me, and Robert went to Monaldini's to glance at it. Sure enough it is a stone. He says a violent attack. And let me do him justice. It was only the misstatement in the 'Athenæum' which overset him, only the first fire which made him wink. Now he turns a hero's face to all this cannonading. He doesn't care a straw, he says, and what's more, he doesn't, really. So I, who was only sorry for him, can't care. Observe, Isa, if there had been less violence and more generosity, the poems would obviously have been less deserved. The English were not always so thin-skinned. Lord Byron and Moore have.... [_The rest of the letter is lost_] * * * * * _To Miss I. Blagden_ Rome: April 2, [1860]. Ever dearest Isa,--Here are the letters! I am sorry I wrote rashly yesterday; but from an expression of yours I took for granted that the packet went by the post; and I have been really very anxious about it. No, Isa; I don't like the tone of these letters so well. I can understand that what is said of Belgium and the Rhine provinces is in the event of a certain coalition and eventual complication, but it doesn't do, even in a thought and theory, to sacrifice a country like Belgium. I respect France, and 'l'idée Napoléonienne'; yes, but conscience and the populations more.