London, 7 March 1891 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N.W. 
Dear Sir, 

Very many thanks for your kind letter of 23 February, the 
3 numbers of the Critica Sociale and your offer to send it to me regular- 
ly in future. As former Secretary for Italy on the General Council of 
the International I naturally take a great interest in the progress of 
the socialist movement in your country and particularly in Lom- 
bardy where, as a young man, I spent three months, of which 
I still retain happy memories. 

I should like to thank you equally for the good wishes you were 
kind enough to send me on the occasion of the publication of the arti- 
cle by Marx* in the Neue Zeit. In publishing it I was merely carrying 
out my duty to the memory of Marx on the one hand and to the Ger- 
man party on the other. 

You are quite right when you wonder whether I shall have time to 
contribute either to your revue or to the socialist library you are 
about to publish. Indeed the preparation of new editions of Marx’s 

* Critique of the Gotha Programme 

144 Engels to Ravé. Mid-March 1891 

works and of my own pamphlets will barely leave my time to finish 
the manuscript of Volume II of Marx’s Capital. Just now I have four 
pamphlets* to revise, complete and furnish with new introductions, 
so how can I possibly find time for any other work? Nevertheless 
I wish you every success and shall be interested to see a good Italian 
translation of our 1847 Manifesto’ and, were you to find that one or 
other of my articles might be of interest to the Italian public, I should 
be delighted to re-read my work in your bella e ricchissima lingua.“ 
E con distinta stima La saluto, 

F. Engels 
Il dt Let amico Stepniak viaggia in questo momento nell’ America.*