“MY DEAR TROLLOPE,—­What a pity that my time does not allow me to visit Italy at any other season than just in summer.  We are in the midst of our canvass for the general elections.  My son Augustus is to be returned for my old place Szecseny without opposition on the 21st.  On the following day we go to the poll at Gyoengyoes, a borough which is to send me to Parliament.  It is a contested election, therefore rather troublesome and expensive, though not too expensive.  Parliament meets with us on the first of September.  Thus my holidays are in July and August.  Shall we never have the pleasure to see you and Mrs. Trollope, to whom I beg you to give my best regards, here at Pesth?  Next year is the great exhibition at Vienna.  Might it not induce you to visit Vienna, whence by an afternoon trip you come to Pesth, where I know you would amuse yourselves to your hearts’ content.

“My children are quite well.  Charles is at the University at Vienna.  He despises politics, and wants to become Professor at the University of Pesth in ten or twelve years.

“As to me I am well, very busy; much attacked by the Opposition since I am a dreaded party man.  Besides I have to re-organise the National Museum, from the library, which has no catalogue, to the great collections of mineralogy and plants.  We bought the splendid picture gallery of Prince Esterhazy.  This too is under my direction, with a most important collection of prints and drawings.  You see, therefore, that my time is fully occupied.

“Yours always,

“FR. PULSZKY.”

* * * * *

My wife and I did subsequently visit our old friend at Pesth, and much enjoyed our brief stay there and our chat of old times.  But the work of re-organising the Museum was not yet completed.  I do sincerely hope that the task has been brought to an end by this time, and that I may either in England or at Pesth once again see Franz Pulszky in the flesh!

CHAPTER XIV.

According to the pathetic, and on the face of it accurately truthful, account of the close of his life in Mr. Forster’s admirable and most graphic life of him, I never knew Landor.  For the more than octogenarian old man whom I knew at Florence was clearly not the Landor whom England had known and admired for so many and such honoured years.  Of all the painful story of the regrettable circumstances which caused him to seek his last home in Florence it would be mere impertinence in me to speak, after the lucid, and at the same time delicately-touched, account of them which his biographer has given.