I have many letters from Pulszky, written most of them after his return to Pesth, and for the most part too much occupied with the persons and politics of that recent day to be fit for publication.

Here is one, written before he left Florence, which may be given: 

* * * * *

“VILLA PETROVICH.

“MY DEAR TROLLOPE,—­I am just returned from a long excursion with Boxall to Arezzo, Cortona, Borgo San Sepolcro, Citta di Castello, Perugia, and Assisi.  We were there for a week, and enjoyed it amazingly.  I am sorry to say that I am not now able to join your party to Camaldoli, since I must see Garibaldi, and do not know as yet what I shall do when the war begins, which might happen during your excursion.  I hope you will drink a glass of water to my remembrance at La Vernia from the miraculous well, called from the rocks by my patron saint, St. Francis of Assisi.  I shall come to you on Sunday, and will tell you more about him.  I studied him at Assisi.

“Yours sincerely,

“FR. PULSZKY.”

* * * * *

The following passages may be given from a long letter, written from Pesth on the 27th of March, 1869.  It is for the most part filled with remarks on the party politics of the hour, and persons, many of them still on the scene:—­

* * * * *

“MY DEAR MRS. AND MR. TROLLOPE,—­You don’t believe how glad I was to get a token of remembrance from you.  It seems to me quite an age since I left Florence, and your letter was like a voice from a past period.  I live here as a stranger; you would not recognise me.  I talk nothing but politics and business.  There is not a man with whom I could speak in the way that we did on Sundays at your villa.  I am of course much with old Deak.  I often dine with him.  I know all his anecdotes and jokes by heart.  He likes it, if I visit him; but our conversation remains within the narrow limits of party politics and the topics of the day.  Sometimes I spend an evening with Baron Eotvoes, the Minister of Public Instruction, my old friend; and there only we get both warm in remembering the days of our youth, and building chateaux en Espagne for the future of the country.  Eotvoes has appointed me Director of the National Museum, which contains a library of 180,000 volumes, mostly Hungarian; a very indifferent picture gallery, with a few good pictures and plenty of rubbish; a poor collection of antiquities; splendid mediaeval goldsmith work; arms, coins, and some miserable statues; a good collection of stuffed birds; an excellent one of butterflies; a celebrated one of beetles, and good specimens for geology and mineralogy.  But all this collection is badly, if at all, catalogued; badly arranged; and until now we have in a great palace an appropriation of only 1,200_l._ a year.  I shall have much to do there—­as much as any minister in his office, if politics leave me the necessary time for it.