thought of the army and the law for them, he had since been thinking they were less likely to be rogues and impostors if he kept them out of professions. I lived nearly all the best days of my life on less than 1507. a year; they may do the same. 'A young single man in Italy need not spend more. Music, drawing, reading, occupy more innocently the few hours of ' life that are worth living than worldly and lucrative pursuits. Happily all three are very fond of one another, and will never 'scramble.' There was no reasoning with such nonsense as this. Such a fool's-paradise can only be shut when the irreparable mischief has been done. A The farther letters interchanged in February and March of this year (1831) concerned chiefly the Ipsley estate, and other matters arising out of their mother's death. Landor steadily refused to profit by the latter incident in any way, and could not see why his trustees should even think of letting the place. His mother had enjoyed the change of air every summer, and why should not his sisters? Indeed, he would much rather never let it than deprive them of any benefit they might derive from such a change. Certainly our dear mother prolonged her life 'by the quiet of the place, and the delight she took in its beau'tiful scenery.' The furniture he would most assuredly not receive anything from. Let it be given to some honest family in low circumstances, whose fathers or mothers had ever showed any kindness to any of the Landors; some old servant of their grandmother, or their aunt Eyres. Llanthony, I am afraid, 'will never be occupied by any one. I proposed to take down 'the house, and sell the materials; for certainly neither I nor 'Arnold will ever live there. I never think of it without think'ing of the ruin to which it has brought me; leaving me one 'of the poorest Englishmen in Florence, instead of one of the ' richest.' However, they might not perhaps think him so badly off, if they were to come and see his beautiful villa, his noble hall and staircase. Yet he would rather have had it near Swansea, the part of the world he liked best of any. By choice he would always be within easy walk of the sea. His great failure at Fiesole had been the attempts to raise a turf. He finds the ground will produce everything but grass; so they will know what to send him, and let them not forget his favourite mulberry. The close of his letter turns to the younger generation of Warwickshire names. 'Merely names to me, but connected ' with remembrances that reach beyond them.' But he supposes the families go on much the same, and what would the Lucys think if he were to introduce into a dialogue Shakespeare's old Sir Thomas? His sisters do not directly answer that; but Elizabeth's next letter has a mention of the Lucys, doubtless arising out of it, which is highly picturesque and suggestive. Some families, she says, never seem to change through all their generations. There are the Lucys, for instance. Old Lucy was at that time sheriff, and she only hopes his little boy of six years old will appear in court with him. 'He is a good little fellow, but neither judge nor jury could look grave at him. He is old Lucy precisely. He believes the whole world was made for him and in honour of his dignity. He opens his round little eyes, buttons his round little mouth, inflates his round little face, and is graver than any owl, including his grandpapa.' IV. ENGLAND REVISITED. That life was to pass without trouble even in the villa Gherardescha, the reader will hardly expect from what he knows of the character of its new lord. At the opening of 1831 I find him in the thick of a terrible dispute with one M. Antoir, an old attaché of the French legation, who, having a cottage near the villa, had accused Landor of stopping an underground watercourse supplying the lands of both, and on his peremptory denial had charged him with asserting what was not true. Hereupon Landor challenged the Frenchman, and obtained for his second Mr. Kirkup, who was sufficiently wise in such matters to carry Landor through with honour and safety. The folly and obstinacy of a second had cost Mr. Kirkup the life of one of his best friends, John Scott; and he so managed the present affair that it is only now worth mention as an evidence of Landor's docility and confidence in proper hands. When not left wholly to himself he was never quite unmanageable. The incident occurred at the close of 1830; and in 1831 there reached him from London the first collected edition of his Poems, prepared at the suggestion of Francis Hare to whom it was dedicated, and published on commission by Mr. Moxon, Julius Hare guaranteeing the expenses. Not many months later his sisters were startled by a series of very radical and exultant letters from him, in regard to reform bills, at a time when it seemed, on the other hand, to these good kind women, that their glorious country and its unimprovable constitution had fallen into the hands of fools and rogues. But this was nothing to their wonder at his announcement to them, on the 7th of February 1832, of a sudden intention formed by him to visit England in May. Ablett had pressed him so much, and his obligations to that friend were so great, that he had not felt justified in continuing to refuse. In May 1832, in midst of the excitement that still was attending the great Reform Bill, he arrived accordingly; and on the 14th of that month wrote from London to tell his sisters that he had traversed France safely in the thick of the cholera, but that missing the boat at Dieppe, he was kept there a week with nothing to see or read, and nobody to talk to. He had afterwards stayed two days at Brighton with his Ianthe of early days, the Countess de Molandè and her family, 'in the midst of music, dancing, and fashionable people turned radicals. This amused 'me highly. Lady Bolingbroke told me that her husband would never enter the House of Lords again. Yesterday I dined with our good old friend Lord Wenlock. This morning the people 'are half mad about the king and the Tories.' He reached London at last, and during his three days' stay attended a reception at the Duke of Sussex's, visited Charles Lamb at Enfield, and went up to see Coleridge at Highgate. In the last two visits his companion was Mr. Crabb Robinson, who had been very anxious that he should see those worthies, and be seen of them. He did not make much of his interview with Coleridge, who, though he put on a bran-new suit of 'black' in honour of the visit, and made Landor as many fine speeches as if he had been a little girl, yet managed to keep all the talk to himself, and took no notice of an enthusiastic mention of Southey; but the hour he passed with Lamb was one of unalloyed enjoyment. A letter from Crabb Robinson before he came over had filled him with affection for that most lovable of Landor's next visit was to Julius Hare at Cambridge. He saw now for the first time the friend to whose judgment and active kindness he owed so much, and passed three delightful days with him. Next he went to exchange greetings with his sisters at Warwick; after a week with them, made more joyous by the frequent presence of Mr. Kenyon, who with his wife was then staying at Leamington, he pushed on to join Mr. Ablett in North Wales; and from Llanbedr in July he wrote to his sisters. He and Ablett were to leave in another week for Lancashire and Cumberland, where he proposed to spend a day or two with Southey, and about as much time with Wordsworth. He described his friend's Welsh home as abounding in magnificent trees, with the richest valley in the world as well as the most varied hills; and with lofty mountains not too near, nor too distant, but just as great folks should be. He declared that every cottage on the estate was more habitable than the best house on the Continent, for that every one had a patent oven and a clock, and was surrounded by a garden. Our next glimpse of him is at the Lakes with Southey and Wordsworth, to whom he introduces Ablett, and with whom his stay is more brief than was at first intended, because of other unlooked-for claims upon him. But an evening was spent in company with both, recollected afterwards for its talk of poets and poetry, wherein I remember his telling me he thought scant justice was done to Byron by his friends, and insufficient appreciation given to Scott; for that, when he had himself quoted from the latter a line about the dog of a traveller lost in the mountain snows, the comment it drew forth was a remark upon it by Wordsworth as the only good line in the piece, with addition that the very same subject had been treated in one of his own poems, which he thereupon recited from beginning to end. I have heard him say also, that, objection having been taken to an over-abundance of imagery in the prose of the Conversations, Wordsworth unluckily took to himself a remark made in reply, that prose will bear a great deal more of poetry than poetry will bear of prose. Once again, before leaving Cumberland, the friends met at the seat of a common friend of both Ablett and Wordsworth, Mr. Rawson of Wastwater. I heard myself from Mr. Ablett two or three years later of the happy day thus passed; and his account to me of the laughable vehemence with which Landor had denounced the word impugn, employed by Southey in the course of their talk, and after unavailing defence given up by him to his friend's immitigable wrath, receives amusing confirmation from a reply afterwards made to a letter of Southey's, who, having found the word in Spenser and Shakespeare as well as in Cranmer and South, retracted his too hasty surrender, and had taken heart to say so to his friend. Spenser and Shakespeare,' retorts Landor, 'have employed words ugly enough, but this is |