in Florence, sent him home a leaf from the
garden of his old house at Fiesole. That
friend had first asked him what he should
send him home, and he had stipulated for
this gift—found by Mr. Forster among his
papers after his death. The friend, on
coming back to England, related to Landor
that he had been much embarrassed, on
going in search of the leaf, by his driver's
suddenly stopping his horses in a narrow
lane, and presenting him (the friend) to
"La Signora Landora." The lady was
walking alone on a bright Italian- winter- day;
and the man, having been told to drive
to the Villa Landora, inferred that he
must be conveying a guest or visitor. "I
pulled off my hat," said the friend,
"apologised for the coachman's mistake,
and drove on. The lady was walking with a
rapid and firm step, had bright eyes, a fine
fresh colour, and looked animated and
agreeable." Landor checked off each clause
of the description, with a stately nod of
more than ready assent, and replied, with
all his tremendous energy concentrated
into the sentence: " And the Lord forbid
that I should do otherwise than declare
that she always WAS agreeable to every
one but me!"

Mr. Forster step by step builds up the
evidence on which he writes this life and
states this character. In like manner, he
gives the evidence for his high estimation
of Landor's works, and it may be added
for their recompense against some neglect,
in finding so sympathetic, acute, and
devoted a champion. Nothing in the book is
more remarkable than his examination of
each of Landor's successive pieces of
writing, his delicate discernment of their
beauties, and his strong desire to impart
his own perceptions in this wise to the
great audience that is yet to come. It
rarely befals an author to have such a
commentator: to become the subject of so
much artistic skill and knowledge, combined
with such infinite and loving pains.
Alike as a piece of Biography, and as a
commentary upon the beauties of a great writer,
the book is a massive book; as the man and
the writer were massive too. Sometimes,
when the balance held by Mr. Forster has
seemed for a moment to turn a little heavily
against the infirmities of temperament of a
grand old friend, we have felt something of a
shock; but we have not once been able to
gainsay the justice of the scales. This feeling,
too, has only fluttered out of the detail,
here or there, and has vanished before the
whole. We fully agree with Mr. Forster that
"Judgment has been passed" —as it should
be— " with an equal desire to be only just on
all the qualities of his temperament which
affected necessarily not his own life only.
But, now that the story is told, no one will
have difficulty in striking the balance
between its good and ill; and what was really
imperishable in Landor's genius will not
be treasured less, or less understood, for
the more perfect knowledge of his character."

Mr. Forster's second volume gives a fac
simile of Landor's writing at seventy-five.
It may be interesting to those who are
curious in caligraphy, to know that its
resemblance to the recent handwriting of
that great genius, M. VICTOR HUGO, is
singularly strong.

In a military burial-ground in India,
the name of WALTER LANDOR is associated
with the present writer's, over the grave of
a young officer. No name could stand there,
more inseparably associated in the writer's
mind with the dignity of generosity: with a
noble scorn of all littleness, all cruelty,
oppression, fraud, and false pretence.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE EAST. CAISTOR AND NORWICH.

FROM Caistor look-out, sixty feet high, the
itinerant bird watches the brown-winged herring
boats beating up against the wind; he
sees miles of grassy sand-hills, and white belts
of shore, gleaming almost as snowy as the
racing foam; on the foreshore, like stranded
turtles, loll red-bottomed boats among patches
of coarse gorse, and on the inner slopes of the
hills, clear of the long loose drifts which here
and there encroach on the marshes, rise the red
roofs and black tarred walls of fishermen's
villages; the fishermen's gardens and hedgerows
bordering the waste, gradually lead on to belts
of trees and chequerings of fertile fields; and
at the doors of the Caistor cottages the crow can
clearly discern rugged-faced fishwives sitting
netting among lobster-pots and heaps of fishing
furniture. The church tower at Caistor has a
legend of its own, for over the centre of its
parapet a long low ridge marks the tomb of a
Norfolk maiden, who, losing her lover by
shipwreck on this treacherous coast, directed, before
her heart quite broke, that her body should be
buried up there under a pyramid, which should
be high enough to serve as a sea mark. The
pyramid is gone, even the lover's name is forgotten,
but the woman's true devotion is still
remembered. About a mile from Caistor, over
the fields, a long line of old brick wall, beyond
a moat screened by tall trees, marks the ruins
of the Falstolfs' old fortified mansion, Caistor
Castle, built in the reign of Henry the Fifth.
It was then three hundred feet square, and had
a round tower at each corner. Only one of these