‘My dear Rogers,—I lamented exceedingly not having been able to see you before I set out; but I was hurried by business to the last moment. I was so much lowered in January by the influenza that the work of the Session fell heavily upon me, and I found I must go and take a few weeks’ rest. I therefore set out to-morrow morning for the Blue Mediterranean, as you poets call it, or ought to call it, and hope, D.V., to be at Cannes on Thursday evening, sleeping every night but one on the road.
‘I have letters from Lady Susan Hamilton, now at Venice, which show all the stories of Walpole having left her to be pure fabrications, as I always believed they would turn out to be.
‘I can give you no public news from this place. All seems unsettled and uncertain. But I feel confident there will be no mischief now, and most likely none before the election in 1852, or even then. This however is not the general opinion. I rely for my view on the universal fear of violence which constrains all parties.
