1885 LETTERS FROM ROME 393 



HOTEL VICTORIA, ROME, VIA DEI DUE MAOELLI, 

 Jan. 25, 1885. 



MY DEAR DONNELLY Best thanks for the telegram 

 which arrived the day before yesterday and set my mind 

 at ease. 



I have been screwing up the old machine which I 

 inhabit, first with quinine and now with a form of strychnia 

 (which Clark told me to take) for the last week, and I 

 have improved a good deal whether post hoc or propter 

 hoc in the present uncertainty of medical science I decline 

 to give any opinion. 



The weather is very cold for Rome ice an eighth of an 

 inch thick in the Ludovisi Garden the other morning, 

 and every night it freezes, but mostly fine sunshine in the 

 day. (This is a remarkable sentence in point of grammar, 

 but never mind.) The day before yesterday we came out 

 on the Campagna, and it then was as fresh and bracing a 

 breeze as you could get in Northumberland. 



We are very comfortable and quiet here, and I hold 

 on till it gets warmer. I am told that Florence is 

 detestable at present As for London, our accounts make 

 us shiver and cough. 



News about the dynamiting gentry just arrived. A 

 little more mischief and there will be an Irish massacre 

 in some of our great towns. If an Irish Parnellite 

 member were to be shot for every explosion I believe the 

 thing would soon stop. It would be quite just, as they 

 are practically accessories. 



I think would do it if he were Prime Minister. 



Nothing like a thorough Radical for arbitrary acts of 

 power ! 



I must be getting better, as my disgust at science has 

 ceased, and I have begun to potter about Roman geology 

 and prehistoric work. You may be glad to learn that 

 there is no evidence that the prehistoric Romans had 

 Roman noses. But as I cannot find any particular 



