for some information, and I made my visit, finding him engaged with a dispatch, and as I wrote a message on the business on which I had come, I added that Lord Rosebery was at the Hôtel de Rome and was leaving that night, and left his lordship’s card with mine.  When I got back to the hotel I found Von Keudall’s carriage at the door and him closeted with Lord Rosebery.  And certainly no man could then have told the English statesman the state of things in Italy so well as the large-hearted German ambassador, who enjoyed the confidence of every element in Italian politics as a sincere friend of the country.  He was recalled later on account of a pique of Herbert Bismarck, whose untimely meddling with public affairs had, I believe, more to do with his father’s fall than any act of the Prince.  As an eminent German statesman put it, in a conversation not long after the recall of Von Keudall, “a Bismarck dynasty could not be tolerated.”  Von Keudall was succeeded by his antithesis, a nullity in court and country of whom even his fellow diplomats could say nothing in praise.

The Rudiní ministry had no long life and merited no more, while that of Giolitti, which followed, ended in scandal and disaster.  The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Brin, with whom alone I had had to do, was an honest, able, and patriotic man, and my relations with him were always excellent.  The fall of that ministry coincided with the culmination of the financial and political disorders which were the direct consequence of the overthrow of Crispi and the demoralization which ensued.  From the beginning of the financial embarrassment which came to its crisis during the term of Rudiní’s government, I had devoted much attention to the financial situation and had predicted the crash when no one else foresaw it.  But for Villari I should have been expelled from Italy on account of my letters exposing the situation, which created such a sensation that Rothschild wrote to a financial authority in Rome to inquire what truth there was in them, receiving naturally such assurances as only hid the trouble.  But when the crash came people said, “How did you know?  What a prophet you were!” etc., etc.  Tanlongo, the director of the Banca Romana, which led off in the crash, threatened the “Times” with a libel suit, and accompanied the threat by offers to me of personal “commercial facilitations” to drop the subject.  The argumentum ad hominem did not weigh, but it was desired in the office to avoid legal troubles and I was advised to keep a more moderate tone.  The disaster came so soon after, however, that I got all the credit, and maintained abroad the prestige of a greater authority in Italian finance than I perhaps deserved.

It is true that honesty and courage are two things that a correspondent has no right to boast of, for honest editing and management presupposes them in him, and a conspicuous want of either cuts his career very short unless he is uncommonly clever; but as the result of my personal experience I may say that, having campaigned with many English colleagues, I have found them to be almost universally men of thorough honesty and unflinching courage.  Personality aside, I think I may be permitted to say so much of a profession of whose real character and besetting temptations no one can know so much as one of themselves, and of whom the general public knows very little.