at Torquay; and the acquaintance was quickly renewed during his last
years at Florence. He would frequently come to our house in the Piazza
dell' Independenza, and chat for a while, generally after he had sat
silent for some little time; for he used to appear fatigued by his
walk. Later, when his walks and his visits had come to an end, I used
often to visit him in "the little house under the wall of the
city, directly back of the Carmine, in a bye-street called the Via
Nunziatina, not far from that in which the Casa Guidi stands," which
Mr. Forster thus describes. I continued these visits, always short,
till very near the close; for whether merely from the perfect courtesy
which was a part of his nature, or whether because such interruptions
of the long morning hours were really welcome to him, he never allowed
me to leave him without bidding me come again.

I remember him asking me after my mother at one of the latest of these
visits. I told him that she was fairly well, was not suffering, but
that she was becoming very deaf. "Dead, is she?" he cried, for he had
heard me imperfectly, "I wish I was! I can't sleep," he added, "but I
very soon shall, soundly too, and all the twenty-four hours round."
I used often to find him reading one of the novels of his old friend
G.P.R. James, and he hardly ever failed to remark that he was a
"woonderful" writer; for so he pronounced the word, which was rather a
favourite one with him.

It was a singular thing that Landor always dropped his aspirates. He
was, I think, the only man in his position in life whom I ever heard
do so. That a man who was not only by birth a gentleman, but was by
genius and culture--and such culture!--very much more, should do
this, seemed to me an incomprehensible thing. I do not think he ever
introduced the aspirate where it was not needed, but he habitually
spoke of 'and, 'ead, and 'ouse.

Even very near the close, when he seemed past caring for anything, the
old volcanic fire still lived beneath its ashes, and any word which
touched even gently any of his favourite and habitual modes of thought
was sure to bring forth a reply uttered with a vivacity of manner
quite startling from a man who the moment before had seemed scarcely
alive to what you were saying to him. To what extent this old volcanic
fire still burned may be estimated from a story which was then current
in Florence. The circumstances were related to me in a manner that
seemed to me to re