“Villa Morelli, Florence, Jan. 5,1866.
“I am so ‘shook’ by a bad train and a [? wetting] that I can scarcely hold a pen, and my head is still addled with the crash and reverberation of big guns, for I have been ‘assisting’ at the trial of armour-plates, with steel shot, for the Italian Navy,—though what they have to do with the subject, seeing that they neither fire at the enemy or wait to be fired at, is more than I know.
“Persano was so overcome by terror that he was literally carried down the ladder to his gig, when he changed his flag to the Affondatore. The on dit is he will be dismissed from the service. Quite enough, God knows, for any shortcoming; for bravery, after all, as Dogberry says of reading and writing, is ‘the gift of God.’
“We have had a sombre Xmas here: my wife very ill, and the rest of us poorly enough.
“There is not a word of news. A small squabble with the Turks, who fired at one of the ships, has made the Italians warlike once more, and they are crying out, ‘Hold me, for you know my temper!’ But it will blow over after some un-grammatical interchange of despatches, and be forgotten.
“Hardman was dining with me the other day, when an Italian admiral—the ablest man they have—launched out fiercely against ‘The Times’ and its Italian correspondent. The thing was too late for remedy, but Hardman’s good sense prevented further embarrassment.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Villa Morelli, Jan. 7, 1866.
“I hope long ere this your face-ache has left you. I dread these neuralgic things, having had one or two seizures of them: and they are so infernally treacherous; they come back just when one is triumphing over being rid of them.
“I send you some O’Ds. One, I hope, will please you—the ‘Two Rebellions.’ I know you will go with me in the d———d cowardice of the newspaper fellows talking to a man in a pinch and saying how he should behave. I had one of these men out in my boat at Spezzia, and such a pluckless hound I never saw, and yet if you read his Garibaldian articles in the paper, you’d have thought him a paladin!