“I mean to get back to Florence by the end of the week. You shall have an instalment of T. B. immediately.
“If Lord D. gets his congress for Denmark it will be hard to dislodge the Government—the more with a two-million-and-a-half surplus. In fact, a good harvest is the Providence of the Whigs, and they are invariably pulled out of their scrapes by sheer luck. At the same time, if Lord Derby comes in, where could he find a Foreign Minister?”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Croce di Malta, Spezzia, April 6, 1864
“The post has just brought me O’D. on ‘Whist,’ but no proof of ‘The Woman in Diplomacy.’ Perhaps I blundered and never sent it, or perhaps you got but did not like it. At all events, I return the ‘Whist’ by this post corrected. If there had been time I’d have dashed off an O’D. on French Justice in Criminal Cases, apropos to that late infamy of M. Pellier, but I fancied you had got enough of O’D. for this coming month, and probably you are of the same mind.
“I have done my consulars here—that is, I have called on the authorities and had them all to dinner, the bishop included; and we have fraternised very cordially and drank all manner of violent deaths to Mazzini, and to-morrow I go back into the obscurity of private life, and forget if I can that I have been a great man. Wasn’t it a Glasgow dignitary who resented being called a man on a trial, and exclaimed, ‘I’m not a man, I’m a bailie’?
“I see by ‘The Telegraph’ that Lord Clarendon has joined the Government and Stansfield left. There is a twofold game in that, for I don’t despair of seeing them beaten if the Queen does not put pressure on Lord Derby, for there is a sentiment in his class that, with regard to the Crown, rises above all party considerations, and represents that old feudal feeling by which nobles stood round the monarchy at any personal loss or peril.
“That letter to ‘The Times’ about the Italian Government seizing Garibaldi’s balance at his banker’s is all rot. The Government simply sequestrated a revolutionary fund subscribed by revolutionists for public disturbance, and openly, flagrantly so done. Why will patriots never be truthful?”
To Dr Burbidge.
“Casa Capponi, Thursday, 10, 1864.