as the dawn of the
1st of May, he wrote a few lines of poetry upon it; then, leaning back,
said, "I shall never write again. Put out the lights and draw the
curtains." Very precious would those lines be now, had they been found.
Wilson fancies that Landor must have destroyed them the next morning on
rising.

* * * * *

The old man had his wish. Years before, when bidding, as he supposed, an
eternal farewell to Italy, he wrote sadly of hopes which then seemed
beyond the pale of possibility.

"I did believe, (what have I not believed?)
Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,
And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.
Hope! hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
Can lift no aspiration, ... reasoning
As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,
And the sun cheered corruption! Over all
The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,
And light us to our chamber at the grave."

Italy recalled her aged yet impassioned lover, and there, beneath the
cypresses of the English burying-ground at Florence, almost within sound
of the murmur of his "own Affrico," rest the weary bones of Walter
Savage Landor. It is glorified dust with which his mingles. Near by, the
birds sing their sweetest over the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Not far off, an American pine watches vigilantly while Theodore Parker
sleeps his long sleep; and but a little distance beyond, Frances
Trollope, the mother, and Theodosia Trollope, her more than devoted
daughter, are united in death as they had been in life.

"Nobly, O Theo! has your verse called forth
The Roman valor and Subalpine worth,"

sang Landor years ago of his _protegee_, who outlived her friend and
critic but a few months. With the great and good about him, Landor
sleeps well. His genius needs no eulogy: good wine needs no bush. Time,
that hides the many in oblivion, can but add to the warmth and
mellowness of his fame; and in the days to come no modern writer will be
more faithfully studied or more largely quoted than Walter Savage
Landor.

"We upon earth
Have not our places and our distances
Assigned, for many years