ter
of mine to you must have miscarried,--a not unfrequent occurrence when
entrusted to our Foreign Office for transmission. Should it ever reach
you, you will perceive how unjustly you have charged me with neglecting
your wishes. I have ordered the Sicilian wine for your friend; I have
obtained the Royal leave for you to shoot in Calabria; and I assure
you it is rather a rare incident in my life to have forgotten nothing
required of me! Perhaps you, who know me well, will do me this justice,
and be the more grateful for my present promptitude.

It was quite a mistake sending me here; for anything there is to be
done, Spencer or Lonsdale would perfectly suffice. _I_ ought to have
gone to Vienna,--and so they know at home; but it's the old game played
over again. Important questions! why, my dear friend, there is not a
matter between this country and our own that rises above the capacity
of a Colonel of Dragoons. Meanwhile really great events are preparing in
the East of Europe,--not that I am going to inflict them upon you, nor
ask you to listen to speculations which even those in authority turn a
deaf ear to.

It is very kind of you to think of my health. I am still a sufferer; the
old pains rather aggravated than relieved by this climate. You are aware
that, though warm, the weather here has some exciting property, some
excess or other of a peculiar gas in the atmosphere, prejudicial to
certain temperaments. I feel it greatly; and though the season is
midsummer, I am obliged to dress entirely in a light costume of
buckskin, and take Marsalla baths, which refresh me, at least for the
while. I have also taken to smoke the leaves of the nux vomica, steeped
in arrack, and think it agrees with me. The King has most kindly placed
a little villa at Ischia at my disposal; but I do not mean to avail
myself of the politeness. The Duke of San Giustino has also offered me
his palace at Baia; but I don't fancy leaving this just now, where there
is a doctor, a certain Luigi Buffeloni, who really seems to have hit
off my case. He calls it arterial arthriticis,--a kind of inflammatory
action of one coat of the arterial system; his notion is highly
ingenious, and wonderfully borne out by the symptoms. I wish you would
ask Brodie, or any of our best men, whether they have met with this
affection; what class it affects, and what course it usually takes?
My Italian doctor implies that it is the passing malady of men highly
excitable, a