hospitality. With the immense number of English here, it would be impossible for me to get on, unless I made this rule. In summer I had some men occasionally to play at Whist, all of course Foreigners. I have taken my present lodging to the end of June. My hope is to go to England for two or three months about that time. I pay between 14 and £15 sterling a month for my apartment. It is in a capital situation—and a second floor. It is an admirable country for long rides, but very bad for short ones. The pavement of the Town is so slippery that it is dangerous to ride over it—most of the gates are at a very great distance, and after you pass them, you have a mile or two of stone wall, before you get out into the open country—which is beautiful and excellent for riding. The result is that I never do ride. Being almost the only Englishman here who has anything to do, beyond sight seeing and amusement, my hours do not suit my Countrymen. My great friend is a Count Gozze, Austrian Secretary of Legation. He is an old Dresden friend of mine. Rome is a very rainy place, which obliges me often to hire a carriage to go out in the evening. The hired carriages are good, but dear, about nine shillings for an evening. Lord Walpole is here—no one else I think that you know. I have scribbled all this because you ask me, and because little details about the writer (if one really cares for him) are generally the most interesting parts of letters, written where there are no great events going on. You would think me oldwomanish if I mentioned half my anxieties about you and my Father.

A few months later, the brother, Captain Lyons, an exceptionally promising and gallant naval officer, died of wounds received before Sebastopol.

In 1856 promotion came in the shape of the secretaryship of Legation at Florence, but he continued to be employed in Rome, and stood twenty-second on a list of twenty-four secretaries of Legation. His prospects of further advance did not appear reassuring, and in March 1857, he writes to his father (now a peer), 'My chance at present seems to rest almost entirely on Lord Clarendon's disposition to give practical effect to the good opinion he expresses of me. I should trust with more confidence to that, if he had not promoted six secretaries of Legation before me during my residence here, and afterwards offered me as promotion the post of Secretary of Legation at Florence. Had it not been for your visit to England at the critical moment, I should now have been no more than simple Secretary of Legation, doing nothing at Florence.'

In the autumn of 1857, Lord Normanby, Minister at Florence, having gone on leave, Lyons was sent to take his place, and, instead of having nothing to do, found himself at once involved in one of those trivial questions which so deeply exercised the diplomacy of a former generation, but which are now of rare occurrence.

Earlier in the year the Pope had paid a visit to Tuscany, and during his stay at Florence a banquet was held in his honour, to which the members of the diplomatic corps were invited. Much to their indignation they were not accommodated at the Tavola di Stato or Sovereign Table, where His Holiness was seated, and Lord Normanby, the British Minister, a K.G., Ex-Viceroy, and social magnate, considered that an apology was due from the Tuscan Government. Unfortunately for Lord Normanby, his colleagues, having previously agreed to support him, backed out of their undertaking, and the task of extracting an apology fell upon Lyons, for Lord Normanby had departed uttering dark threats that he would not return unless the apology was forthcoming. The Foreign Office took up the matter seriously, and for no less than three months an animated controversy was carried on, in the course of which 'The Tuscan authorities showed themselves so thoroughly wrongheaded that every time the subject was mentioned they said or did something which made it more difficult for them to go back,' and Lord Clarendon administered to them 'a severe rebuke.' Finally, whether owing to the severe rebuke or not, some sort of expression of regret was obtained; the injured Lord Normanby returned to his post, and Lyons resumed his duties at Rome. Whence he writes on March 6, 1858:—

The question of Reforms in the Papal Administration, which was so much agitated during the Pope's journey and immediately afterwards, appears to be entirely forgotten. The repressive measures which have been adopted in France since the attempt on the Emperor[1] would seem to render it difficult for H.M. to urge other sovereigns to Liberal reforms. The mode in which the intelligence of the attempt was received at Rome was shocking. One can hardly say that any class expressed horror: the lower people openly declared their regret that the crime had not been successful, and the middle classes took little pains to conceal that they shared this feeling. In fact the policy which is supposed to be adopted by France of coquetting with the Liberal Party, without doing anything serious in their favour, has alienated the sympathies of this part of Italy.

Reforms of a simple character were evidently urgently needed in the Papal Administration, for just about this time a Canadian bishop and other British tourists were openly plundered on the main road between Rome and Civita Vecchia.

The turning point in Lyons's fortunes may be said to have arrived when early in March he received orders from Lord Malmesbury to proceed to Naples to inquire into the case of the Cagliari.

The Cagliari was a mail steamer plying between Genoa, Sardinia and Tunis, and on June 25, a number of Mazzinians who had taken passage in her seized the master and the crew, altered the course of the vessel, landed at the Island of Ponza in Neapolitan territory, where they liberated three hundred political prisoners, and subsequently proceeded to Sapri, in the neighbourhood of Salerno. Here they again disembarked, expecting the inhabitants to rise in their favour, but encountered a superior force of Neapolitan troops who killed or captured the whole party, whilst the Cagliari was seized by Neapolitan warships as she was making her way ostensibly to Naples. Some weeks later it was ascertained that amongst the prisoners in Naples were two English engineers, Watt and Park by name, and it was stated that these two men were entirely ignorant of the conspiracy, and had been forced by the conspirators to work the engines under threats of being summarily shot if they refused. Under the circumstances, as was only natural, application was made by the British Government that they should at least have a fair trial, and that the acting Vice-Consul at Naples should be permitted to visit them in gaol.

Diplomatic relations between England and the Neapolitan Government having been suspended for some years, Lord Clarendon wrote himself direct to Signor Carafa, the Neapolitan Foreign Minister, in November, urging the necessity of dealing with the case in an equitable spirit, but with incredible perverseness and stupidity the Neapolitan Government continued to refuse upon one pretext or another either to release the men or to bring them to trial, or even to permit the Vice-Consul to visit them. In March, 1858, Watt and Park were still in gaol, and had been subjected to such abominable treatment that the health of both was completely broken down, and Watt had become partially insane. Under these circumstances, a change of government having in the meanwhile occurred in England, Lord Malmesbury directed Lyons to proceed at