“Do not be alarmed,” he writes, “at a letter which ’like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.’  Such, I suspect, mine will be, though it ought to contain only thanks for the admirable ones you have sent to me on the late affairs of Tuscany.  Yesterday Mr. Trollope gave them to me as your present.  I then exprest a hope that he or you would undertake a history of Italian affairs from the Treaty of Campo Formio down to the present day.  Indeed, I hope and trust that it may be continued a year or two farther, until the recovery of Rome from the most perfidious enemy she and Italy were ever opprest by.  And this under the title of deliverer!  Lay your two heads together, and let me have to boast that the best and truest of our historians were my personal friends.  Southey and Napier were most intimately so.  Hallam is a dull proser—­no discovery or illustration, no profound thought, no vivid description, not even a harmonious period.  Macaulay is a smart reviewer, indifferent to truth, a hanger-on of party.  Lingard is more honest, and writes better.  He does not tag together loose epigrams with a crooked pin.  Now put the empty chairs of these people against the wall, and sit down to your table with a long piece of work before you.  And now you must be tired, as I foretold you would be.  So hail the farewell of your affectionate old friend,

“W.  LANDOR.”

* * * * *

Here is another, undated, but shown by the Bath postmark to have been written in 1857.  The whole letter is strongly characteristic of the writer, as indeed was everything that Landor wrote, said or did, so thoroughly and in every sense of the word was he original; but, as in the preceding letter, the most interesting portion is that toward the end, where he gives some amusing indications of his peculiar political opinions and feelings.  This letter also was written to the same correspondent: 

“My dear friend:  It is now three years since I have been in London, except in passing through it to the Crystal Palace, without dismounting.” [How curiously the phrase indicates the habits of the writer’s youth, when gentlemen’s journeys were for the most part performed on horseback!] “At Sydenham I remained three weeks, almost; but the air of London always disagreed with me, added to which, the necessity of visiting was always intolerable to me, and I have lost many friends by refusing to undergo it.  If Mr. Trollope should find a few days’ leisure for Bath, I can promise him a hearty reception and a comfortable bedroom.  Is it not singular that on your letter being brought to me I laid down for it Town and Country [a novel by Frances Trollope], which interests me as much on a second reading as on the first?  To-morrow I must run—­imagine a man of eighty-one running!—­for the Athenaeum.  I myself have not thrown away the pen, which sadly wants mending.  They have published Scenes from the Shades, and Alfieri and Metastasio,