ompany in my walks and
rambles as you profess to have, but of which I perceived no sign
whatever when I visited you, first at Llanthony Abbey and afterward
on the Lake of Como. Well do I remember our long conversations in the
silent and solitary church of Sant' Abondio (surely the coolest spot
in Italy), and how often I turned back my head toward the open door,
fearing lest some pious passer-by, or some more distant one in the
wood above, pursuing the pathway that leads to the tower of Luitprand,
should hear the roof echo with your laughter, at the stories you had
collected about the brotherhood and sisterhood of the place.

_Landor._ I have forgotten most of them, and nearly all: but I have
not forgotten how we speculated on the possibility that Milton might
once have been sitting on the very bench we then occupied, although we
do not hear of his having visited that part of the country. Presently
we discoursed on his poetry; as we propose to do again this morning.

_Southey._ In that case, it seems we must continue to be seated on the
turf.

_Landor._ Why so?

_Southey._ Because you do not like to walk in company: it might
disturb and discompose you: and we never lose our temper without
losing at the same time many of our thoughts, which are loath to come
forward without it.

_Landor._ From my earliest days I have avoided society as much as I
could decorously, for I received more pleasure in the cultivation and
improvement of my own thoughts than in walking up and down among the
thoughts of others. Yet, as you know, I never have avoided the
intercourse of men distinguished by virtue and genius; of genius,
because it warmed and invigorated me by my trying to keep pace with
it; of virtue, that if I had any of my own it might be called forth by
such vicinity. Among all men elevated in station who have made a noise
in the world (admirable old expression!) I never saw any in whose
presence I felt inferiority, excepting Kosciusco. But how many in the
lower paths of life have exerted both virtues and abilities which I
never exerted, and never possessed! what strength and courage and
perseverance in some, in others what endurance and forbearance! At the
very moment when most, beside yourself, catching up half my words,
would call and employ against me in its ordinary signification what
ought to convey the most honorific, the term _self-sufficiency_, I bow
my head before the humble, with greatly more than their humiliatio