“Trieste, July 5, 1871.
“As I had finished the enclosed O’D., I read how Trinity had made me LL.D. The degree must not be exported to me in gratitude. I really believe a large amount of what I have said, which is more than can be asserted by Tichborne, or the man who says he is Tichborne.
“It is a great grief to me that I cannot say what I think of that curious trial, and all that I should like to say of the solicitor to the Crown’s examination; but I see it would be too dangerous, and, to use his own style, I might ask myself, ‘Would you not be surprised to hear that an attachment was issued against you?’”
“The hot weather has begun here, and in such honest earnest that I can do nothing but hunt out a dark cool corner and go to sleep.
“I am very sorry not to be in Ireland now, when the [? ] have been invited to the Exhibition banquet on the 20th; but I have done with banquets now, and must address myself to my maccaroni with what appetite I may.”
To Mr William Blackwood.
“Trieste, July 13, 1871.
“I should have liked to have detained these proofs until I heard what your uncle might have to say to them, but I am afraid of delay, and send them back at once. My hope is that he will like them, though I cannot dare to think that my chief, Lord Granville, will approve of what I say of his speech at the Cobden dinner. At any rate, if they kick me out, I can go home and be a rebel, and if too old for a pike I am still good for a paragraph.
“All that London life with its flatteries and fat-feeding has sorely unfitted me for my cold mutton v. existence at home; but it cannot be helped, and I must try to get back into the old groove and work along as before.
“There is now a dull apathy over life—the consequence of all our late excitement; but we cannot always afford to pay for ‘stars,’ and Bismarck is too costly an artiste to keep always on the boards. From all I see, the French are just as insolent and bumptious as before they were licked,—showing us, if we like to see it, what the world would have had to endure had they been the conquerors!