"P.S.--I send an instalment of 'Sir B.' and let me have it early, as I am drawing towards the 'Tattenham corner of the race.' I want to see how it looks. Read it carefully, and give me your shrewdest criticism.
"I have just heard that there is a plot here to carry off Cook's excursionists for ransom by the brigands. What a good 'O'Dowd' it would make to warn them!
"The first shot is to be fired by the Italians tomorrow, the anniversary of 'St Martin's,' which they think they won!"
"I begin this at midnight, the first cool moment of the twenty-four hours, to finish to-morrow some time before post hour. I see that you have learned our disaster here already--a sore blow, too, to a young army: but _que voulez-vous?_ La Marmora is an ass, with a small head and a large face like Packington. You might make a first lord of him, but never a general. The attack of the first division had never been intended to do more than draw out the Austrians and encourage the belief that the _grand_ attack was to follow: meanwhile Cialdini was to have crossed the Po and moved on Rovigo. The blundering generals made a real movement of it, and got a real thrashing for their pains. The division was all but cut to pieces. They fought well--there's no doubt of it; they even bore beating, which is more than one would have said of them. The king was twice surrounded and all but made prisoner, and the princes behaved splendidly.
"It is a great misfortune that they should have met a repulse at first. I say this because they _must_ have Venice, and I think the great thing is that they should have it without French intervention. I hope if the Conservatives come in that they will see this, and see that Italy cannot go back without being a French province. If we have a policy at all,--sometimes I doubt it,--it is to prevent or _delay_ French aggrandisement. That stupid bosh of volunteer soldiering has so bemuddled English brains that they fancy we have an army. Why, a costermonger with his donkey might as well talk of his 'steed.' I wouldn't say this to a foreigner, nor let them say it to _me_, but it's true. If we could patch up the Italian quarrel and get Venice for them, and arrange an alliance between Italy and Austria, we should do more than by following the lead of Louis Napoleon and playing 'cad' to him through Europe.