money continued to be applied to Landor's use under Mr. Browning's immediate direction even after the event of Mrs. Browning's death, which plunged so many besides himself into mourning, and occasioned his departure from Italy in 1861. With a few extracts from the letter to myself (from Siena on the 13th of August 1859) which will explain these arrangements, and will describe the way in which, to the very last, they were strictly and successfully carried out, I quit this distasteful subject for

ever.

'I agree absolutely with you in your appreciation of the character of Landor and its necessities now and for the future in this untoward position, so absolutely that I shall not go into minute justification of any opinion I may give you about what is to be done, but take for almost granted that you will understand it: subject to questioning from you, should that not be the case. Your plan is the only proper one for obtaining the end we aim at. Mr. Landor is wholly unfit to be anything but the recipient of the necessary money's worth, rather than the money itself. Fortunately he professes to have the same conviction, and prefers such an arrangement to any other. He requires a perpetual guardian in the shape of a servant; one to be ever at hand to explain away the irritations and hallucinations as they arise. They come and go, and leave no trace, treated so; otherwise the effect is disastrous... . . . . I propose to take an apartment as near my own residence in Florence as can be found, and establish him there as comfortably and as economically as possible. I will endeavour to induce my wife's old servant Wilson, who married Ferdinando (Romagnoli) still in our service, to devote herself to the care of our friend. I may say, after our fourteen years' experience of her probity, truthfulness, gentleness, and assiduity, that he can be placed in no better hands; and were he bestowed on a person one whit less trustworthy, I should expect some melancholy result the next day. I can depend on Wilson's acting for me in all respects, and not simply complying with his fancies or profiting by his mistaken generosities. I will receive the two hundred pounds in quarterly payments, as you propose; and will transmit to you, at the end of every quarter, a detailed account of Landor's expenses duly examined and certified by Kirkup.' This last condition was the only one to which I refused assent; and Landor's nieces, to whom it was then proposed to transmit such account, also as strongly objected. I believe that Mr. Browning did nevertheless, against renewed protest, continue to render it to the close.

II. AT SIENA.

While the arrangements for his future life in Florence were in progress, Landor remained quietly at Siena, occupying a plea

sant little cottage in a vineyard inhabited only by the contadino, or farming-gardener, and his wife. Subsequently he became the guest of an accomplished American then staying at Siena, Mr. W. W. Story, who for years has made Italy his home, and has connected his name with Italian art by works not unworthy of its happiest time.

'Landor has to-day completed a three-weeks' stay with the Storys. They declare most emphatically that a more considerate, gentle, easilysatisfied guest never entered their house. They declare his visit has been an unalloyed delight to them; and this, quite as much from his gentlemanliness and simple habits, and evident readiness to be pleased with the least attention, as from his conversation, which would be attractive under any circumstances. An intelligent friend also, on a visit to them, bears witness to the same effect. They perceive indeed, though not affecting themselves, inequalities of temper in him; but they all agree that he may be managed with the greatest ease by "civility" alone.'

Such always was Landor, when he would consent to submit himself to friendly influences. That was at the close of August, and again Mr. Browning wrote to me from Siena on the 5th of September.

'At present Landor's conduct is faultless. His wants are so moderate, his evenness of temper so remarkable, his gentleness and readiness to be advised so exemplary, that it all seems too good; as if some rock must lurk under such smooth water. His thankfulness for the least attention, and anxiety to return it, are almost affecting under all circumstances. He leads a life of the utmost simplicity.'

From Florence also, to anticipate a very little the days immediately after their return, Mr. Browning wrote to me in the middle of October, being then himself on the eve of going to winter in Rome, that he should be grieved indeed to lose sight for a while of the wonderful old man, whose gentleness and benignity had never been at fault for a moment in their threemonths' intercourse. They had walked together for more than an hour and a half only two days before. His health had been perfect, his mind apparently at ease. 'He writes Latin verses; 'few English, but a few; and just before we left Siena an ima'ginary conversation suggested by something one of us had said ' about the possible reappearance of the body after death. He 'looks better than ever by the amplitude of a capital beard, 'most becoming we all judge it.' If,' Mrs. Browning at the

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same time wrote to me, 'if you could only see how well he looks ' in his curly white beard!'

From his own letters to myself during the stay at Siena I should hardly have dared to judge so favourably, though there were some allowances to be made. His great immediate trouble being removed, he had now again unhappily set his heart on obtaining, through me, some means of making public reply to what had been publicly said of him in England in connection. with the trial at Bath; and I had no alternative but to tell him plainly that the thing was quite impossible. He did not take this so well as the condition of mind above described might have led me to anticipate; but the case as affecting him involved, in many particulars, so much real hardship, it was so impossible to speak of what had been to him the original provocation, and all that followed had given to his punishment a proportion so exceeding his offence judged even at its very worst, that any wrong arising arising out of it incident to myself seemed but a part of a wretched complication not avoidable by either of us. Landor was very shortly to apply to his friend what the reader has seen shrewdly applied by Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice to a friend in similar circumstances; and I was not to have the benefit of the same magnanimity. It is however the more incumbent on me to say, on the eve of our only estrangement in a quarter of a century of friendship, that the impression left with me altogether was exactly what Mr. Browning and Mr. Story depict in the foregoing letters, for that reason here introduced. The drawbacks have been described already. There were always those occasional outbreaks, very unwarrantable because generally unjust to others, which in so many instances I have shown to be as little rational as reducible to reason. Indeed I should say, on the whole, that in Landor's affections at their best, just as more rarely in even the finest parts of his books, there was a certain incoherency. But, in several leading qualities, his character was also quite as fine as his books, and the letters quoted do only justice to it. He had a disposition largely generous; an anger easily placable; and an eagerness to return, in quite chivalrous excess, whatever courtesy or attention he received, which was at all times delightful to witness.

The conversation above referred to was not the only one written at Siena. I received another from him at the same date, with earnest appeal that I should endeavour by means of it to get some help for Garibaldi's wounded; and with this he sent me several pieces of writing having the same common drift, to recommend such a settlement of Italian affairs as might leave Venice and Florence independent republics, and King Victor Emanuel protector and president of the Italian States in union. I need hardly add that in this 1859 year the promise had gone suddenly forth, backed by French legions, of a free Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic; and the conclusion to which Landor at once had rushed he expressed in that form.

There appears to have been some difficulty in getting him back to Florence, increased by the effect produced upon him by some new step in the chancery proceedings consequent on the injunction against him recently obtained. He wrote to tell me that the object of all that was going on could be no other than to drive him mad; that the publication of his defence alone could save him; and that until this could be accomplished he must retire into utter solitude. His friends were about to leave Siena, and he should himself go into some cottage or hut at Viarreggio. Alas, what could I reply? I could only wait until a few days' later post brought me word that to the arguments employed to induce his return to Florence he had thought it right to yield. 'Nothing,' he added in this letter to me, 'can 'exceed Mr. Browning's continued kindness. Life would be ' almost worth keeping for that recollection alone.'

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III. IN FLORENCE.

The lodgings found for Landor in Florence, and where he remained until his death, were in a little house under the wall of the city directly back of the Carmine, in a bye street called the Via Nunziatina, not far from that in which the Casa Guidi stands a quarter always liked by the Florentines for its antiquity and picturesqueness, and having higher associations since both for them and for English visitors; to whom a marble slab upon the wall in its last-mentioned street, placed by order of

the municipality of Florence, now indicates the house in which a great English poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, made Italy the subject of her latest song.

'He is in a small comfortable apartment, newly papered and furnished; a sitting-room, dining-room, bed-room, and book-room communicating with each other, on the first floor. Below are rooms for Mrs. Wilson and a maid-servant. There is a small garden attached. He professes himself quite satisfied with all our attempts to make him comfortable, and seems to like Mrs. Wilson much: but there is some inexplicable fault in his temper, whether natural or acquired, which seems to render him very difficult to manage. He forgets, misconceives, and makes no endeavour to be just, or indeed rational; and this in matters so infinitely petty that there is no providing against them.'

That letter was written to me by Mr. Browning from Rome on the 9th of December 1859, and only told what, knowing the condition of mind in which Landor still continued, I expected to hear, as soon as the personal influences and restraints should be withdrawn under which he had been living lately. In the same month I also heard from himself (December 21), that for the first time since his return to Italy it had been snowing all night, and that this alone was like England to him.

'Bath has no resemblance on earth, and I never have been happy in any other place long together. If ever I see it again, however, it must be from underground or above. I am quite ready and willing to go, and would fain lie in Widcombe churchyard, as I promised one who is no more. It may cost forty pounds altogether. I cannot long survive the disgrace of my incapacity to prove the character of those who persecute me, and this you only can relieve me from. When I think of it, I feel the approach of madness; and so adieu.'

There was much else in this letter which I do not quote, but to which I found it absolutely necessary so to reply as to put clearly before him, without any kind of doubt, that what he desired could not be done. This led to the suspension of our correspondence. I continued to write to him for some time, my letters remaining unanswered; he did not write to me again. until a year before his death; but in June 1860 Mr. Browning had returned to Florence, and from him, in a letter dated the 15th, I had once more personal report of my old friend.

'I find him very well, satisfied on the whole, busy with verse-making and particularly delighted at the acquisition of three execrable daubs by Domenichino and Gaspar Poussin, most benevolently battered by time.