and Codrus and Polio.  These last three are in Fraser.  If they bring a few pounds or shillings, the money will be given to Capera, a laboring man who has written some noble poetry.” [The writer in question produced some very tolerable verses, remarkable as coming from a man in his position, but in our friend’s enthusiastic language they become “noble poetry” directly he makes the man his protege—­a truly Landorian touch!] “I could have collected three hundred pounds for Kossuth from friends who wrote to me about it, and probably ten or a dozen times as much from others, for no man ever had so few friends or acquaintances as I have.  Nearly all are dead, and I have no leisure or inclination for new ones.  It gave me much pleasure to hear that the fine and pleasant Lord Normanby is in part recovered from his paralysis.  I parted from him at Bath with few hopes.  Never have I spent a winter in England so free from every kind of malady as this last.  A disastrous war ends with a disgraceful peace.  We are to have an illumination and ringing of bells.  Sir Claude Scott and myself will not illuminate, but I have promised the ringers twenty shillings if they will muffle the bells.  Rejoice!  The best generals and best soldiers in the Crymea [sic] were Italians.

“W.S.L.”

Landor had many queer crotchets about spelling, and always absolutely declined to follow any rule but his own.  It seems to have been one of these crotchets to spell Crimea as he spells it in the above-quoted letter—­on what grounds I do not pretend to be able to guess:  With regard to the seemingly unpatriotic sentiment contained in the last lines, it must be remembered that the writer was addressing a person long resident in Italy, and eagerly anxious for the well-doing of the Italian troops in their struggle with the different despotisms which oppressed the Peninsula.  The bribing the ringers to muffle the bells is a highly characteristic trait.

Of a third letter I will print only a part, because the remainder concerns the unfortunate affair which compelled the writer finally to leave England—­the result, as is well known, of a trial for libel in which Landor was cast in heavy damages which were far beyond his diminished means to pay.  He acted very wrongly, and still more imprudently, in attempting to expose what he honestly deemed misconduct of a nature that outraged all the generous feelings of his nature, by the publication of a very gross libel.  The passages in the letter in question which refer to this business, then in the stage preceding his conviction, abundantly testify to the fact that the sentiments which had impelled him to act as he did were wholly and solely those of generous indignation at wrong done, in no-wise against himself, but against another, whom he deemed to be oppressed and unprotected.  But I think, on the whole, that no good purpose would be served by raking up the matter afresh.  And (for Landor in his wrath was at no time a Chrysostom) the letter bristles with assertions and accusations couched in language which might, for aught I know, make the publication of it a repetition of the offence for which he suffered.  The other matters touched on are not uninteresting manifestations of opinion: