Jones tells me that after the meeting of the Trustees on Friday, Mr. D’Israeli had an interview with you about the Blacas purchase. I write, therefore, to thank you for having backed my recommendation, which I am quite sure you must have done strongly, or otherwise the Government would not have come to a decision so rapidly. I never was more astonished than when I received authority to treat on Sunday morning last. While we were signing the contract poor DeWitte was at the Grand’Messe. ‘If I had only known,’ he said to me afterwards, ‘two hours sooner what you were about, I would have telegraphed to the Emperor at Compiègne.’ The French are greatly disgusted. From all I can learn, they meant to offer about £40,000, and keep the matter dragging on till they had found out our last offer. I am very much pleased at the result, because I know how greatly the value of our Museum, as a whole, will be increased by this purchase, which supplies exactly what we were most deficient in. There will, I have no doubt, be a great outcry in England about the largeness of the sum; but I am perfectly ready to bear the brunt of all that. The public will find out in time what a prize they have got. I hear that Mérimée was very anxious that it should be secured for the Louvre. He was on the Commission, but was obliged to go South. Perhaps you may be writing to him; I should like very much to hear what he has to say about the purchase. There is no one who has done more to defend my purchases than he has, up to this date, so I hope he will now. I am going to see the collection of M. Thiers to-morrow morning, and shall be curious to hear what he says. Yours ever sincerely, C. T. NEWTON.” We trust that we shall not be held to have failed in our endeavour to do justice to the services rendered by Mr. Newton to the National Museum. Apart from the high attainments to which testimony should be offered, this gentleman was so intimately connected with the subject of the memoir, that the omission of such a record would have been a serious fault, considering the constant intercommunion which existed between the two, and the mutual assistance they rendered each other. As a conclusion to our present chapter, it must be noted that on the 6th of July, 1859, Panizzi was admitted to the Honorary Degree of D.C.L. at the University of Oxford. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] CHAPTER XVI _Desire to Visit Naples; Pius IX; Ferdinand II; Revolution of 1848; Poerio and Settembrini; ‘Giovine Italia;’ Gladstone’s Visit to Naples._