"Certainly being at the head of things is pleasanter than being subordinate. We all agree very well; and I have made the testing office into a kind of private room, where I can come and write to you undisturbed, surrounded by my dear, bright brass things which all of them remind me of our nights at Birkenhead. Then I can work here too, and try lots of experiments; you know how I like that! and now and then I read--Shakespeare principally. Thank you so much for making me bring him: I think I must get a pocket edition of _Hamlet_ and _Henry the Fifth_, so as never to be without them. "_Cagliari, October 7._ "[The town was full?] ... of red-shirted English Garibaldini. A very fine-looking set of fellows they are too: the officers rather raffish, but with medals, Crimean and Indian; the men a very sturdy set, with many lads of good birth I should say. They still wait their consort the _Emperor_, and will, I fear, be too late to do anything. I meant to have called on them, but they are all gone into barracks some way from the town, and I have been much too busy to go far. "The view from the ramparts was very strange and beautiful. Cagliari rises on a very steep rock, at the mouth of a wide plain circled by large hills and three-quarters filled with lagoons; it looks, therefore, like an old island citadel. Large heaps of salt mark the border between the sea and the lagoons; thousands of flamingoes whiten the centre of the huge shallow marsh; hawks hover and scream among the trees under the high mouldering battlements.--A little lower down, the band played. Men and ladies bowed and pranced, the costumes posed, church bells tinkled, processions processed, the sun set behind thick clouds capping the hills; I pondered on you and enjoyed it all. "Decidedly I prefer being master to being man: boats at all hours, stewards flying for marmalade, captain inquiring when ship is to sail, clerks to copy my writing, the boat to steer when we go out--I have run her nose on several times; decidedly, I begin to feel quite a little king. Confound the cable, though! I shall never be able to repair it. "_Bona, October 14._