bled
about my supposed utterances on the temporal power.... I will not
trouble you with details, but you may rest assured I have never
said the question of the temporal power was anything except an
Italian question. I have a much greater anxiety than this about
the Italian alliance with Germany. It is in my opinion an awful
error and constitutes the great danger of the country. It may be
asked, "What have you to do with it?" More than people might
suppose. I find myself hardly regarded here as a foreigner. They
look upon me as having had a real though insignificant part in the
Liberation. It will hardly be possible for me to get through the
affair of this visit without making my mind known. On this account
mainly I am verging towards the conclusion that it will be best
for me not to visit Rome, and my wife as it happens is not anxious
to go there. If you happen to see Granville or Rosebery please let
them know this.

We have had on the whole a good season here thus far. Many of the
days delicious. We have been subjected here as well as in London
to a course of social kindnesses as abundant as the waters which
the visitor has to drink at a watering place, and so enervating
from the abstraction of cares that I am continually thinking of
the historical Capuan writer. I am in fact totally demoralised,
and cannot wish not to continue so. Under the circumstances
Fortune has administered a slight, a very slight physical
correction. A land-slip, or rather a Tufo rock-slip of 50,000
tons, has come down and blocked the proper road between us and
Naples.

-------------------------------------

_To Lord Acton._

_Jan. 23, 1889._--Rome is I think definitely given up. I shall be
curious to know your reasons for approving this _gran rifiuto_.
Meantime I will just glance at mine. I am not so much afraid of
the Pope as of the Italian government and court. My sentiments are
so very strong about the present foreign policy. The foreign
policy of the government but not I fear of the government only. If
I went to Rome, and saw the King and the minister, as I must, I
should be treading upon eggs all the time with them. I could not
speak out uninvited; and it is not satisfactory to be silent in
the presence of those interested, when the feelings are very
strong....