“I am glad the chestnut turns out so well, but I was sure she would improve every day she was ridden. If I were Mrs B. I’d strongly demur to putting a collar on her, at least till she was thoroughly made for the saddle; for it is a curious fact that you may harness your saddle-horse but you can’t ride your harness-horse. Mrs B. will understand me, and I am sure agree with me. Whether she does or not, give her my kindest regards.”
To Mr William Blackwood.
“July 16, 1869.
“You are a bad boy not to have come up to town and let us have a shake hands together. I’ll forgive you, however, if you make some pretext for seeing Venice, and come over here for a few days to me. There must surely be some dead time of the year, when magazines, like their writers, grow drowsy and dozy; at all events make time and take a short run abroad, and it will do you a world of good.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, Aug. 4,1869.
“I send you two O’Ds. which I have just done, and hope you will think them good. I imagine you will insert the small benefaction—which I think well enough—in next batch.
“The heat has been nigh killing us all here. Sydney was thrown down by sunstroke on Sunday coming from church, and is still in bed, but now better. The heat was 94° in the shade, and people who had come from Egypt say they had never suffered anything like it there. My poor wife has felt it severely, and the strongest of us have had to give up food and exercise, and merely wait for evening to breathe freely.
“Pray make them send me June No., for I can’t follow the story till I get it.
“Don’t you think that they have hunted down that blackguard, Grenville Murray, too inhumanly even for a blackguard!—I do. (I mean Knox’s decision.)”