toration of the church. Lawsuits followed, and such expenses
and vexations occurred that Landor decided to leave England--always
a popular resource with his kind. His mother took over the estate
and allowed him an income upon which he travelled from place to
place for a few years, quarrelling with his wife and making it up,
writing Latin verses everywhere and on everything, and coming into
collision not only with individuals but with municipalities.

He settled in Florence in 1821, finding rooms in the Palazzo Medici,
or, rather, Riccardi. There he remained for five years, which no doubt
would have been a longer period had he not accused his landlord,
the Marquis, who was then the head of the family, of seducing away
his coachman. Landor wrote stating the charge; the Marquis, calling
in reply, entered the room with his hat on, and Landor first knocked
it off and then gave notice. It was at the Palazzo Medici that Landor
was visited by Hazlitt in 1825, and here also he began the "Imaginary
Conversations," his best-known work, although it is of course such
brief and faultless lyrics as "Rose Aylmer" and "To Ianthe" that have
given him his widest public.

On leaving the Palazzo, Landor acquired the Villa Gherardesca, on
the hill-side below Fiesole, and a very beautiful little estate in
which the stream Affrico rises.

Crabb Robinson, the friend of so many men of genius, who was in
Florence in 1880, in rooms at 1341 Via della Nuova Vigna, met Landor
frequently at his villa and has left his impressions. Landor had
made up his mind to live and die in Italy, but hated the Italians. He
would rather, he said, follow his daughter to the grave than to her
wedding with an Italian husband. Talking on art, he said he preferred
John of Bologna to Michelangelo, a statement he repeated to Emerson,
but afterwards, I believe, recanted. He said also to Robinson that
he would not give 1000 Pounds for Raphael's "Transfiguration," but
ten times that sum for Fra Bartolommeo's picture of S. Mark in the
Pitti. Next to Raphael and Fra Bartolommeo he loved Perugino.

Landor soon became quite the husbandman. Writing to his sisters in
1831, he says: "I have planted 200 cypresses, 600 vines, 400 roses,
200 arbutuses, and 70 bays, besides laurustinas, etc., etc., and
60 fruit trees of the best qualities from France. I have not had
a moment's illness since I resided here, nor have the children. My
wife runs after colds; it would be strange if she d