I am not sure either, whether a larger amount of native brain power, and (in a much greater degree) a higher quality of culture, than that of the general under whom it may be his fortune to serve, is a good part of the equipment of a soldier of fortune.

And Peard's relation to Garibaldi very notably exemplified this.
He was a native of Devonshire, as was my first wife; we saw a good deal of him in Florence, and I have before me a letter written to her by him from Naples on the 28th of January, 1861, which is interesting in more respects than one.

Peard was a man who _would_ have all that depended on him ship-shape.

And this fact, taken in conjunction with the surroundings amid which he had to do his work, is abundantly sufficient to justify the growl he indulges in.
* * * * * "My dear Mrs.Trollope," he writes, "I am ashamed to think either of you or of other friends at Florence; it is such an age since I have written to any of you.

But I have been daily, from morning to night, hard at work for weeks.