upset by the stupidest kind of accident, and a man goes farthest when
he does not know where he is going.

Do have the goodness to continue your comments; for I go slowly, as the
subject demands, and keep much _in petto_ (on which account many readers
grow impatient who would be quite satisfied to have the whole meal from
beginning to end, well braised and roasted, served up at one sitting, so
that they could the sooner swallow it, and on the morrow seek better or
worse cheer at random, in a different eating-house or cook's-shop). But
I, as I have already said, remain in ambush, in order to let my lancers
and troopers rush forward at the right moment. It is, therefore, very
interesting for me to learn what you, as an experienced Field-Marshal,
have already noticed about the vanguard. I have as yet read no
criticisms of this little work; I will read them all at once after the
next two volumes are printed. For many years I have observed that those
who should and would speak of me in public, be their intentions good or
bad, seem to find themselves in a painful position, and I have hardly
ever come face to face with a critic who did not sooner or later show
the famous countenance of Vespasian, and a _faciem duram_.

If you could sometime give me a pleasant surprise by sending the
_Rinaldo_, I should consider it a great favor.

It is only through you that I can keep in touch with music. We are
really living here absolutely songless and soundless. The opera, with
its old standbys, and its novelties dressed up to suit a little theatre,
and produced at pretty long intervals, is no consolation. At the same
time I am glad that the court and the city can delude themselves into
thinking that they have a species of enjoyment handy. The inhabitant of
a large city is to be accounted happy in this respect, because so much
that is of importance in other lands is attracted thither.

You have made a point-blank shot at Alfieri. He is more remarkable than
enjoyable. His works are explained by his life. He torments his readers
and listeners, just as he torments himself as an author. He had the true
nature of a count and was therefore blindly aristocratic. He hated
tyranny, because he was aware of a tyrannical vein in himself, and fate
had meted out to him a fitting tribulation, when it punished him,
moderately enough, at the hands of the Sansculottes. The essential
patrician and courtly nature of the man comes at last very laughably
into