“Julia is ‘contracted,’ but the event is, and must be, somewhat distant. In other respects it is what is called a great match. And so only Baby (as Sydney is called) remains,--a marvellously clever little damsel of ten, whose humour and wit exceed that of all the grown folk I know.
“I hope to send you the first number of my new serial by the end of next month. Its title is ‘One of Them.’”
“I am doing my best at ‘One of Them.’ ‘The Ride’ I write as carelessly as a common letter, but I’d not be the least astonished to find the success in the inverse ratio to the trouble. At all events I am hard worked just now, and as ill-luck would have it, it is just the moment the F. O. should call upon me for details about Italy.
“The position of Sardinia is now one of immense difficulty. If she throws herself on France she must confront the [? Revolutionary] party at home, who are ready to seize upon Garibaldi and place him at the head of the movement. If she adopts Garibaldi and his plans, she offends France, and may be left to meet Austria alone and unaided. The old story--the beast that can’t live on sand and dies in the water. To be sure, our own newspapers assure her complacently that she has the ‘moral aid’ of England. But moral aid in these days of steel-plated frigates and Armstrong guns is rather out of date, not to say that at the best it is very like looking at a man drowning and assuring him all the while how sorry you are that he had not learned to swim when he was young. The crisis is most interesting, particularly so to me, as I know all the actors--Admirals, Generals, and Ministers--who are figuring _en scène_.
“One would have thought the withdrawal of the French Ambassador from Turin would have caused great discomfiture here, but with a native craft--not always right--the Italians think it a mere dodge, and that the Emperor’s policy is: ‘Go on. I’m not looking at you!”’