Garboldisham E. Harling
Dec^r 4^th 48

My dear Talbot -

Have you had any news from Rome lately? it is an age since I have had a letter from L^y M^t E & am anxious to know in what way, if in any, the late events are likely to affect their movements - Povero Pio Nono! what a return he has got for all the efforts, injudicious perhaps, but well intentioned he has made to ameliorate the political condition of his people! Their conduct to him is most dastardly cowardly & ungrateful, & they have shewn themselves no more fit for rational liberty than the most ignorant savage could have done - not worse perhaps, after all, than the French & Germans who have some pretention to Civilisation, all apparently perfectly incapable of discriminating between right & wrong, where & when it is all to end Heaven knows! In the meanwhile if we are to move from our own home in search of pleasure or health it must not be to the continent, but must turn our eye as you propose, towards Egypt & look for peace & tranquility among the Arabs - I should like uncommonly to see a little of that country, but unless I am so ill as to make it requisite that I should go so far south another winter, I have but little chance of getting sufficient leave of absence for so long a journey - What do you think of our Norfolk Murders, it beats the Irish all to nothing, & as we are not far from the spot, it has filled us all here with perfect Horror ^<1> - I shall be glad to hear that you are all pretty well at the Abbey, with kind remembrance to M^rs Talbot & to M^lle Amelina if she is with you believe me Sir

Y^rs Sincerely
G Montgomerie

I continue thank God in pretty good health escaping as yet tracheas & rheumatism

[envelope:]
To
H. Fox Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Chippenham
Wilts-

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Note:

1. On 1 December 1848, a masked and disguised James Rush assassinated the Recorder, Isaac Jermy and his son, Isaac, jnr. at their home of Stanfield Hall, near Wymondham. The motive was a tangled web involving a longstanding feud and claims of ownership. The next day, an editorial in the Times singled it out as a "crime of historic atrocity."