"Your people, I am afraid, will resolve on war with England. Always aggressive, they already devour Canada. I hope Canada will soon be independent both of America and England. Your people should be satisfied with a civil war of ten or twelve years: they will soon have one of much longer duration about Mexico. God grant that you, my dear friend, may see the end of it. Believe me ever,
"Your affectionate old friend,
"W. S. Landor."
It was sad to receive such letters from the old man, for they showed how a mind once great was tottering ere it fell. Blind, deaf, shut up within the narrow limits of his own four walls, dependent upon English newspapers for all tidings of America,—is it strange that during those last days Landor failed to appreciate the grandeur of our conflict, and stumbled as he attempted to follow the logic of events? Well do I remember that in conversations he had reasoned far differently, his sympathy going out most unreservedly to the North. Living in the dark, he saw no more clearly than the majority of Europeans, and a not small minority of our own people. Interesting as is everything that so celebrated an author as Landor writes, these extracts, so unfavorable to our cause and to his intellect, would never have been published had not English reviewers thoroughly ventilated his opinions on the American war. Their insertion, consequently, in no way exposes Landor to severer comment than that to which the rashly unthinking have already subjected him, but, on the contrary, increases our regard for him, denoting, as they do, that, however erroneous his conclusions, the subject was one to which he devoted all the thought left him by old age. The record of a long life cannot be obliterated by the unsound theories of the octogenarian. It was only ten years before that he appealed to America in behalf of freedom in lines beginning thus:—
"Friend Jonathan!—for friend thou art,—
Do, prithee, take now in good part
Lines the first steamer shall waft o'er.
Sorry am I to hear the blacks
Still bear your ensign on their backs;
The stripes they suffer make me sore.
Beware of wrong. The brave are true;
The tree of Freedom never grew
Where Fraud and Falsehood sowed their salt."
In his poem, also, addressed to Andrew Jackson, the "Atlantic Ruler" is apostrophized on the supposition of a prophecy that remained unfulfilled.
"Up, every son of Afric soil,
Ye worn and weary, hoist the sail,
For your own glebes and garners toil
With easy plough and lightsome flail.
A father's home ye never knew,
A father's home your sons shall have from you.
Enjoy your palmy groves, your cloudless day,
Your world that demons tore away.
Look up! look up! the flaming sword
Hath vanished! and behold your Paradise restored."
This is Landor in the full possession of his intellect.
For Landor's own sake, I did not wish to drink the lees of that rich wine which Lady Blessington had prophesied would "flow on pure, bright, and sparkling to the last." It is the strength, not the weakness, of our friends that we would remember, and therefore Landor's letter of September, 1863, remained unanswered. It was better so. A year later he died of old age, and during this year he was but the wreck of himself. He became gradually more and more averse to going out, and to receiving visitors,—more indifferent, in fact, to all outward things. He used to sit and read, or, at all events, hold a book in his hand, and would sometimes write and sometimes give way to passion. "It was the swell of the sea after the storm, before the final calm," wrote a friend in Florence. Landor did not become physically deafer, but the mind grew more and more insensible to external impressions, and at last his housekeeper was forced to write down every question she was called upon to ask him. Few crossed the threshold of his door saving his sons, who went to see him regularly. At last he had a difficulty in swallowing, which produced a kind of cough. Had he been strong enough to expectorate or be sick, he might have lived a little longer; but the frame-work was worn out, and in a fit of coughing the great old man drew his last breath. He was confined to his bed but two or three days. I am told he looked very grand when dead,—like a majestic marble statue. The funeral was hurried, and none but his two sons followed his remains to the grave!
One touching anecdote remains to be told of him, as related by his housekeeper. On the night before the 1st of May, 1864, Landor became very restless, as sometimes happened during the last year. About two o'clock, a. m., he rang for Wilson, and insisted upon having the room lighted and the windows thrown open. He then asked for pen, ink, and paper, and the date of the day. Being told that it was 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.