Very long Autograph Letter Signed to "My dear STORY" (Lieutenant General Sir Edward Bruce, 1824-1893, Soldier and Writer. M.P.)

(William Wetmore, 1819-1895, American Sculptor, Art Critic, Poet and Editor) saying that he thinks the "last communication which passed between our respective firms was a letter I posted to Madame le Conte at Naples when I lighted there for a moment on my way to Constantinople in '78. The excursion I made with my colleagues that year along the Balkans was perhaps the most agreeable I ever took part in - weather splendid, scenery grand, with the picturesque accompaniments of daily encampments, Russian cavalry as escor, and waggon trains drawn by oxen or buffaloes and driven by Bulgarian peasants, for our baggage. Early in June our way lay through fields of roses, then being gathered for the distilleries of otto, which we saw at work in every valley - next we entered a region of vineyards - and finally as we approached the Black Sea we traversed vast forests - and all the time the Balkan range, generally green to the summits, rose close by... as we cross and recrossed it in our visits to the passes which formed the important parts of the frontier... notwithstanding that our national interests were often conflicting, we formed a very harmonious party - we being the representative of the Seven Powers that signed the Treaty of Berlin... Last March I was unexpectedly called upon by Lord Salisbury to take the place of our Commissioner on the Armenian frontier - the Commission having come to a deadlock the preceding year & never having left Constantinople. This time I had only two colleagues, a Russian General and a Turkish Colonel - and I only took two officers with me from England - when all preliminaries were settled at Constantinople, we started for Trebigond. The most picturesque Turkish town I have seen, less squashed and ruinous than usual, spotted all over with foliage, and full of bits for an artist. The old Byzantine walls remain, on the sides of the two deep glens which define the ancient citadel, and across their mouth the old harbour is still traceable, large enough for an ancient navy... All round were high mountains..." he continues describing his trip, the scenery "All this part of Asia Minor is dreary, partly because there are absolutely no trees - everywhere brown mountains... we (the English party) kept on eastward thro' Kars (with Ararat, a dome of snow,long visible on our right) to... the Capital of the Caucasus... thence by rail to Pate on the Black Sea where we embarked and coasted along... The change of Government here was in some respects unlucky for me - I was sent out to see that the Turk got fairplay - and Lord Salisbury would have been much better pleased with the results than the present ministry could be expected to be - I was at Constantinople when Mr Goschen arrived..." he then talks about his circumstances back home and says he was "dining lately with Martin, now Sir Theodore, he was loud in praise of a certain poem which had lately appeared in Blackwood. I told him I knew the gent wot wrote it, and cordially agreed with him - he pronounced it 'better than Browning...'", he asks "what is doing in the Studio - and what was the fortune of the Hebrew monarch who was when I saw him, a creature of clay, tho' with a spirit which promised well for immortality in marble...", he ends with "regards to Mrs Story, Madame Peruzzi and the youths...", 12 sides 8vo., Palace Chambers, Ryder Street headed paper, 9th January From 1879 to 1881 Hamley was British commissioner successively for the delimitation of the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, Ottoman Empire in Asia and the Russian Empire, and Ottoman Empire and Greece, and was rewarded with the KCMG. Promoted colonel in 1863, he became a lieutenant-general in 1882, when he commanded the 2nd division of the expedition to Egypt under Lord Wolseley, and led his troops in the Battle of Tel el-Kebir, for which he received the KCB, the thanks of Parliament, and 2nd class of the Order of Osminieh. During the war Hamley contributed to Blackwood's Magazine an admirable account of the progress of the campaign, which was afterwards republished. After 1850 Story lived in Rome and devoted himself to Sculpture. There he was intimate with the Brownings and with Walter Savage Landor. I His apartment, in Palazzo Barberini, became a central location for Americans in Rome. During the American Civil War his letters to the Daily News in December 1861 and his articles in Blackwood's, had considerable influence on English opinion. His daughter Edith Marion (1844-1907) the Marchesa Peruzzi de' Medici, became a writer.