taken as the lady and friend referred to. But whether the tear he is to dry was for her husbands that had been, or for those that were to be, does not appear; and from the recollection of a visit I once made to her with Landor some years later in Bath, I should have said that few tears at any time had troubled that still bright, easy, good-humoured Irish face.

'Lo, where the four mimosas blend their shade

In calm repose at last is Landor laid:

For ere he slept he saw them planted here

By her his soul had ever held most dear,

And he had lived enough when he had dried her tear.'

The natural desire which all this awakened in his sisters to know more about the new abode now affording him such genial occupation, he gratified by a description in a later letter (2d February 1831), which may be read with something still of his own interest and pride in this new possession. I shall only farther preface it by the remark that the money so generously advanced for its purchase was repaid upon his son Arnold's attaining to his majority in 1839, and that Mr. Ablett declined to the last to accept any interest on the loan.

'Two years ago, in the beginning of the spring, I took a walk towards Fiesole with a gentleman settled in North Wales, Mr. Ablett. I showed him a small cottage with about twelve acres of land, which I was about to take. He admired the situation, but preferred another house very near it, with a much greater quantity of ground annexed. I endeavoured to persuade him to become my neighbour. He said little at the time, beyond the pleasure he should have in seeing me so pleasantly situated: but he made inquiries about the price of the larger house, and heard that it was not to be let, but that it might be bought for about two thousand pounds. He first desired me to buy it for him: then to keep it for myself: then to repay him the money whenever I was rich enough,-and if I never was, to leave it for my heirs to settle. In fact, he refuses even a farthing of interest. All this was done by a man with whom I had not been more than a few months acquainted. It is true his fortune is very large; but if others equal him in fortune, no human being ever equalled him in generosity.

'I must now give you a description of the place. The front of the house is towards the north, looking at the ancient town of Fiesole, three quarters of a mile off. The hills of Fiesole protect it from the north and northeast winds. The hall is 31 ft. by 22, and 20 high. On the right is a drawingroom 22 by 20; and through it you come to another 26 by 20. All are 20 ft. high. Opposite the door is another leading down to the offices on right and left; and between them to a terrace-walk about a hundred yards long, overlooking Valdarno and Vallombrosa, celebrated by Milton. On the right of the downward staircase is the upward staircase to the bedrooms;

and on the left are two other rooms corresponding with the two drawingrooms. Over the hall, which is vaulted, is another room of equal size, delightfully cool in summer. I have four good bedrooms upstairs, 13 ft. high. One smaller and two servants' bedrooms over these, 10 ft. high. In the centre of the house is a high turret, a dovecote. The house is 60 ft. high on the terrace side, and 50 on the other; the turret is 18 ft. above the 60. I have two gardens: one with a fountain and fine jet-d'eau. In the two are 165 large lemon-trees and 20 orange-trees, with two conservatories to keep them in, in winter. The whole could not be built in these days for 10,0002.

'I am putting everything into good order by degrees: in fact, I spend in improvements what I used to spend in house-rent: that is about 751. a year. I have planted 200 cypresses, 600 vines, 400 roses, 200 arbutuses, and 70 bays, besides laurustinas, &c. &c. and 60 fruit-trees of the best qualities from France. I have not had a moment's illness since I resided here, nor have the children. My wife runs after colds; it would be strange if she did not take them; but she has taken none here; hers are all from Florence. I have the best water, the best air, and the best oil in the world. They speak highly of the wine too; but here I doubt. In fact, I hate wine, unless hock or claret.'

This was perhaps his happiest time in Italy. The villa gave him employment at home, for which irritating subjects were forgotten or put aside; the Lawleys and other Warwickshire friends pressed upon him hospitalities, which he did not so often decline as of old; with cordial Hare and joyous Gell' many long-remembered pleasures were associated, Hare and his young wife having come to Florence, and visits at each other's houses being frequently interchanged; acquaintance with Mr. Kenyon too, who with his wife made some stay at Fiesole, had ripened rapidly into a friendship which continued through all his later years; to another visitor from England, Mr. Crabb Robinson, full of cordial talk about Southey, Wordsworth, and Lamb, he had taken no less kindly; visitors from places more distant than England made occasional pilgrimages to see him; and even his literary exercises were unattended, at the moment, by fevers of impossible design, or self-invited failures and despairs, for he was simply collecting and revising his poems, and had put away for the present in his desk those dialogues in which, as he told Southey, he had introduced Shakespeare and frightened himself. If his sisters would but visit him now, he had never been so able to bid them welcome. They should have his two best rooms, two more beautiful than any in Warwick-castle, per

fumed with orange-flowers, tuberoses, violets, and mignonette, growing profusely under the windows. In that February letter they are strongly pressed to come, and to bring with them one of his father's breed of spaniels, and to send Mr. Ablett another. A message to his brother Robert was in the same letter, telling him his poem was too good for success, and himself too good for failure by any such mistake as marriage. Henry is the only

But my ex

one of us exactly cut out for the married state. 'treme fondness for children compensates me for everything.' Which he proceeds to show.

'Arnold is not ashamed, though almost thirteen, to throw his arms about my neck and kiss me twenty times together; and the others claim the same right. "and have their claims allowed." Yet he is not effeminate. He is very much admired for his manliness and spirit. He fences, speaks French, and reads Greek passably. I hope he will dance, as I have told him that I lost more pleasure by being a bad dancer than by anything else; and since that he begins to practise more.'

Very sensible reply to all this was made by his sisters. They could understand his own enjoyment in the caresses of his children, but not, in the absence of any present plan of life and study, the advantage the children were to derive from it in future years. They spoke of their nephew Charles, now a lad of eighteen (the letter is dated in March 1831), having become a favourite of Dr. Arnold's; so that when their brother Charles had thought of removing him, I hope not; I cannot spare him,' said Arnold. Why should not his cousin come to England, where all his future interests would be? Was it too late even then to give him the advantage of such a school, where he would not be the less respected for his father's name? Landor's rejoinder was in Dr. Arnold's words, but, alas, with far other meaning: 'I cannot spare him.' He was pleased to hear of Charles, who would keep up the name in England; but Arnold would be content to live in Italy. In other words, he sentenced him to what he has himself characterised, in his touching picture of Andrea of Hungary, as

... the worst

Of orphanage; the cruellest of frauds;

Stint of his education, while he played
Nor fancied he would want it...

So for the two younger boys as well. Though he had once

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.

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