“I half suspect my old friend Whiteside must be in some tiff with the Cabinet. He has not resigned, and yet men are canvassing for his seat for the University. It all looks very odd. It may be that he is bargaining for the Chancellorship, which he is certainly not fit for. I might as well ask to be Mistress of the Robes,—and old Lefroy will not resign unless his son be promoted to the Bench! And this is the man they accuse of senility and weak intellect!
“How like flunkies, after all, are these great gentlemen when it becomes a question of place. There is a dash of ‘Jeames’ through Cabinet appointments positively frightful.
“Wasn’t it cunning to send Garibaldi where he could do nothing? It was the way they muzzle a troublesome man in the House by putting him on a committee. He (G.) grumbles sorely, says he ought to be in Istria, &c.; but there is always the dessous des cartes in this war, and France has had to be consulted or conciliated everywhere.”
To Dr Burbidge.
“Villa Morelli, July 21, 1866.
“I take shame to myself for not having sooner replied to your kindest of notes and thanked you for all your trouble at Malta; but first of all I was obliged to go to Spezzia, and then came the wondrous turn-out of the Whigs, which has kept me in close correspondence with scores of people,—no other good result, however, having come of the advent of my friends to power.
“Malta, at all events, is out of the question; for though they have got no further than civil messages to me, common report (a common liar, says Figaro) says that I ought to get something.
“The war absorbs fortunately thoughts that might under other circumstances have taken a more personal turn, and the war resolves itself pretty much into what that arch scoundrel, L. N., may do next. For the moment he is all but stalemated—that is, he can scarcely move without a check. If he aid Prussia, it will be to strengthen the great Germany that he dreads, and aggrandise the Power that threatens to be more than his rival. If he assist Austria, it is to throw off Italy and undo the past. If he remain neutral, it is to let France subside into the position of seeing Europe able to do without her.
“The armed intervention which he desired with us and Russia we will have none of. He is, as Bright said of somebody the other day, ‘a bad fellow to hunt a tiger with.’
“Now, Prussia was so manifestly in the wrong at first, and had contrived to be so unpopular with us besides, and Bismarck’s views were so palpably false and tricky, he could have no sympathy with us at all,—and yet success (that dear idol of Englishmen) has done fully as much as the best principles and the purest ambition could, and we are rapidly becoming Prussian.