er the centre of these there is another story, set upon the
housetop like a tower; and all Italy, except its sea, is melted down
into the glowing landscape it commands. I plucked a leaf of ivy from the
convent-garden as I looked; and here it is. 'For Landor. With my love.'
So wrote Mr. Dickens to me from Florence on the and of April 1845; and
when I turned over Landor's papers in the same month after an interval
of exactly twenty years, the ivy-leaf was found carefully enclosed, with
the letter in which I had sent it." Dickens had asked him before leaving
what he would most wish to have in remembrance of Italy. "An ivy-leaf
from Fiesole," said Landor.

[102] One message sent me, though all to whom it refers have now passed
away, I please myself by thinking may still, where he might most have
desired it, be the occasion of pleasure. ". . . Give my love to Colden,
and tell him if he leaves London before I return I will ever more
address him and speak of him as _Colonel_ Colden. Kate sends _her_ love
to him also, and we both entreat him to say all the affectionate things
he can spare for third parties--using so many himself--when he writes to
Mrs. Colden: whom you ought to know, for she, as I have often told you,
is BRILLIANT. I would go five hundred miles to see her for five minutes.
I am deeply grieved by poor Felton's loss. His letter is manly, and of a
most rare kind in the dignified composure and silence of his sorrow."
(See Vol. I. p. 315).

[103] "It matters little now," says Dickens, after describing this
incident in one of his minor writings, "for coaches of all colours are
alike to poor Kindheart, and he rests far north of the little cemetery
with the cypress trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so
beautiful." What was said on a former page (_ante_, 182) may here be
completed by a couple of stories told to Dickens by Mr. Walton,
suggestive strongly of the comment that it required indeed a kind heart
and many attractive qualities (which undoubtedly Fletcher possessed) to
render tolerable such eccentricities. Dickens made one of these stories
wonderfully amusing. It related the introduction by Fletcher of an
unknown Englishman to the marble-merchant's house; the stay there of the
Englishman, unasked, for ten days; and finally the walking off of the
Englishman in a shirt, pair of stockings, neckcloth, pocket-handkerchief,
and other etceteras belonging to Mr. Walton, which never reappeared
after that