of kind Bath friends against the old hat he had taken with him on his journey, he thus wrote to Miss Rose Paynter :

'Being somewhat hot-headed, is not an old hat likely to fit me better than a new one? I wish you had seen it in all its glory. What think you of my talking with a king and queen, and displaying it before them? Such, in the most legitimate sense, are the Prince and Princess Czartoryski, he having been proclaimed King of Poland by the deputies of the nobility and people. Knowing my devotion to royalty, but probably more attracted by my hat than by me, he conversed with me the greater part of the evening.'

On his return from Paris with his son, who, upon arrival in London, paid a promised visit to his aunts at Richmond, Landor passed some days with me, while the whigs were making their last unsuccessful resistance to Peel; and it was in my library, as he always afterwards said, he composed the shortest of all his Conversations. It was sent to Kenyon.

Landor. Kenyon, I've written for your delectation

A short Imaginary Conversation.

Kenyon. Landor, I much rejoice at the report;
But only keep your promise-be it short.

This was the time also, he would amusingly protest, when he failed in the only attempt he ever made on ministerial patronage. He had written to tell Lady Blessington that, now the tories were coming in and he was growing old, he should like the appointment of road-sweeper from Gore-house across to Hydepark nobody could dispute his claims, because he had in print avowed himself a conservative; he knew however there must be many names down, and he could wait; only she was to be particular in saying that the place he wanted was for removing dirt, or else there might be some mistake. The mistake must have occurred after all, he said, for the thing was not given to him.

He visited at Richmond, before his return to Bath, the mother and sisters of his wife. 'I might have expected some degree of shyness, at the least on her mother's part. However, nothing of the kind. Neither she nor any one of her daughters was less cordial with me than they had been formerly. Not a single word on those matters which rendered

my stay in Italy quite impossible, and equally so my return to the only habitation in which my heart ever delighted.' Excellent creatures !' he wrote to Kenyon. They received me ' with indescribable kindness, and gave me a couple of dormice. These are great blessings.' The reader will remember Mr. Boythorn's canary.

VI. DEATH OF SOUTHEY.

Southey's last letter to Landor was dated at the close of March 1839. He told his friend that the portrait of Savonarola which he had sent was safely lodged at Keswick; spoke of an epitaph for a proposed monument to Chatterton; and made another announcement, for which the proper place will shortly present itself. His wife Edith had died two years before, having been for many previous years dead to him: but, long as the event had been looked for, it fell heavily at last, and it was to help in bringing back some shadow of his wonted cheerfulness that a little excursion had been projected in the autumn of 1838; when his old friends, Kenyon, Senhouse, and Crabb Robinson, accompanied him and his son to Paris, through Normandy, Brittany, and a part of Louvaine. Kenyon described it to Landor:

'We made a prosperous journey, good weather, good roads, good temper throughout. We travelled five weeks, did all we had intended, and reached Paris on the day we proposed. The only drawback on our journey was that Southey's spirits were not up to the mark, except occasionally, when we passed through the country of Joan of Arc; and that, not having cultivated catholic tastes, pictures, statues, and streets have not much charm for him. We separated at Paris, which Southey declares he will never enter again, and which I had hardly the heart to quit after a month's stay.'

Kenyon's letter closed with a whisper of an expected marriage of one of the travelling party, neither himself, nor Crabb, nor Cuthbert, nor Senhouse; but it was not a thing to talk about till more assured. 6 Though a very rational match, you 'heretic!' The news being at first not a little startling, the same kind-hearted correspondent hastened to suggest what might better reconcile Landor's thoughts to his friend. It was no foolish doting, he assured him, no probable or even possible intru

sion of a second family among the first; but rather an act in its nature considerate to those around him.

'I know no man so nobly and honourably helpless as to all transactions of this world, all its butcherings and bakings and bankings and fendings for himself (out of a library), as Southey; and his daughters, I am sure, could never quit him if the consequence were a solitary life for him. Alone, no man would be so pitiable; and altogether, if a man is to marry again, I should think this a wise match. Never suspecting that he would ever do such a thing however, I asked him the other day whether he had approved or disapproved the marriage of his uncle Hill, who took a wife at sixty. He said, I approved it.'

Kenyon added something as to the lady; naming her age, her frail health, and her unconquerable spirit. He had himself been able to judge of her courage and highmindedness by a truly Spartan letter of hers which Southey had shown him many years ago.

'It was in the time of the stack-burnings, and never was bitter contempt for what she esteemed a cowardly generation of magistrates more strongly expressed than by Caroline Bowles. Southey told me too that in her district they had nominated her for constable, hoping that she would draw off. No such thing. She offered to serve, but they could not for shame swearin a woman. Yet her writings (for, although you and I in our ignorance do not know her works, she is an authoress) are full of beauty, tenderness, and feminine feeling; as her life, I doubt not, has also been. She has for years been a great friend of Southey's, and he has rarely come south without paying her a visit.'

The impression thus conveyed to Landor determined the course taken by him in some painful disputes that followed; and, sharing his high opinion of some friends of his friend to whom it placed him for a time in antagonism, I thought then, and think still, that he was right. Caroline Bowles deserved all that the good Kenyon says of her, and she forfeited none of her titles to admiration or esteem when she became Caroline Southey. In genius and character she was worthy to have inspired an affection for which she sacrificed far more than it was possible she could ever receive.

Between the time of his return from abroad and the incident of his marriage, Southey wrote to a friend that he had heard of Landor during his last transit through London, and had seen at Kenyon's an excellent portrait of him by a young artist named Fisher. As a picture too he thought it not less good than as a likeness; though the same artist had also painted Kenyon, and

made him exactly like the Duke of York. This Landor portrait became the property of Crabb Robinson, by whom it was be queathed to the National Portrait-Gallery; and characteristic as in some respects it is, nor undeserving of Southey's praise, its expression is too fiercely aggressive, and, as Landor himself used to say, its colour too like a dragon's belly, to be entirely agreeable or satisfactory. It certainly had more in it of the opening than of the closing lines of the little poem which Landor, during a visit at this time made to me, addressed to its painter. 'Conceal not Time's misdeeds, but on my brow

Retrace his mark:

Let the retiring hair be silvery now

That once was dark:

Eyes that reflected images too bright
Let clouds o'ercast,

And from the tablet be abolisht quite
The cheerful past.

Yet Care's deep lines should one from waken'd Mirth

Steal softly o'er,

Perhaps on me the fairest of the earth

May glance once more.'

Not many days later, in March 1839, I heard that he had received the letter written by Southey from the house of Caroline Bowles at Buckland, for which Kenyon had prepared him.

'Southey has written. He tells me of his intended marriage: that he has known the lady for twenty years; that there is a just proportion between their ages; and that having but one daughter single, and being obliged to leave her frequently, she wants a friend and guide at home. Nothing is more reasonable, nothing more considerate and kind. Love has often made other wise men less wise, and sometimes other good men less good but never Southey.'

The marriage followed within a few days; then, a brief interval before the return to Keswick; and then, the mournful close. Of the wisest of our human plans and designings the issues are not ours. The very day that joined newly-wedded wife and husband on the threshold of their Cumberland home, witnessed the close on earth of all that was happy in their loving intercourse. The tragedy is to be written in other words than mine. The lines are incomplete, but all that for the present can be given.

Come, friend! true friend! join hands with me, he said.
Join hand and heart for this life's latest stage,

And that to come unending. I engage,

God being gracious to me, as we tread
The dim descent, to be to thee instead
Of all thou leav'st for my sake! On our way,
If not with flowers and summer sunshine gay,
Soft light yet lingers, and the fadeless hue
Of the Green Holly. Be of courage! Come!
Thou shalt find friends, fear not: warm, loving, true,
All who love me.-He said, and to his home

Brought me. Then sank, a stricken man.....

Before his consciousness departed, he had received and read Landor's last letter to him, assuring him of gratitude and affection unalterable.

'God, who has bestowed on you so many blessings, and now the greatest of all in that admirable woman who watches over you like a guardian-angel, will never let you be forgotten even by the least worthy of your friends; and will vouchsafe to you at last, I hope and trust, such blessings as neither friendship nor health itself is sufficient to afford. If any man living is ardent in his wishes for your welfare, I am : whose few and almost worthless merits your generous heart has always overvalued, and whose infinite and great faults it has been too ready to overlook. I will write to you often, now I learn that I may do it inoffensively; well remembering that among the names you have exalted is WALTER LANDOR.'

But, for a little while, still the mind was to shine and be visible above the mists and dimness creeping over it. My and 'your dear friend,' wrote Mrs. Southey, thanks you for your 'letter. But, alas! he no longer says, I will write soon to Landor; for when I proposed to answer in his stead, he said,— 'Yes, yes, do so, pray do. Landor has indeed a true regard for 'me.' She resumed after a few days:

'You are often with him still in spirit; his affectionate remembrance of you is unfading. The volume of poetry still oftenest in his hand is Gebir. It lived upon the sofa with us all last week; and he often exclaimed in delight, struck as by a first reading with something that charmed him, Why, what a poem this is! If at such times you could see him, you would still see the glorious mind all undimmed in those lustrous eyes of his. He took up his Book of the Church to-day, and, turning its leaves over and over, looked up at me and said, Well, thank God, I have written a book that may do good to somebody.'

Not very frequently did even such fitful glimpses of the fast-fading intelligence appear; but with them still returned the recollection of Landor. 'It is very seldom now,' wrote Mrs. Southey on the 24th of December 1841, 'that he ever names any person: but this morning, before he left his bed, I