“I am here sailing and swimming and laying up a store of health and strength to carry me on, Deo volente, through the hot late summer of Florence.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Florence, July 30, 1866.
“I have got (this moment) yours of the 23rd, and the cheque, for which I thank you. ‘One way or other,’ as Lord Derby says, I am terribly crippled for gilt, and the money came most apropos.
“I am glad you like my views in O’D. I feel sure they are correct. Curiously enough, the O’D. will just fit in with the sentiments declared by Lord Derby, both regarding America and Europe. It is very hard to write patiently of the Italians just now, their exigence rising with every new success of Prussia, totally forgetful of the fact that to the Alliance they have brought nothing as yet but discomfiture and defeat. Every charge of a Prussian squadron raises their demands, and every Prussian bulletin enlarges their cries for more frontier! What a people! and yet one must not say a word of this; one must back them up and wish God-speed and the rest of it, for there is a worse thing, after all, than a bumptious Italy,—an insolent and aggressive France.
“Garibaldi is at his wits’ end with the scoundrels they have given him to command. About eighty per cent of them should be at the galley. He is ready to throw up his command any day, and nothing but urgent entreaty induces him to remain.
“There will be great difficulty in getting the Italians to accept a reasonable amount of territory with Venice. They always regard whatever is given generously as something far below their just claim; and if you want to make an Italian cabman miserable, pay him double and be civil at parting, and he will go off with the affecting impression that he might have had five times as much out of you if he had only stood to it. I know them well: they are d———d bad Irish—Irish minus all generosity and all gratitude.
“I have come back in great mind after a week’s swimming. I believe if I could live at Spezzia I might rival Methuselah.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Florence, Aug. 13, 1866.