of one of his own most whimsical fancies.

Turning back from the narrative of his last piece of writing to recall
a few occurrences of the year during which it had occupied him, I find
him at its opening in one of these humorous moods, and another friend,
with myself, enslaved by its influence. "What on earth does it all
mean?" wrote poor puzzled Mr. Landor to me, inclosing a letter from him
of the date of the 11th of February, the day after the royal nuptials of
that year. In this he had related to our old friend a wonderful
hallucination arising out of that event, which had then taken entire
possession of him. "Society is unhinged here," thus ran the letter, "by
her majesty's marriage, and I am sorry to add that I have fallen
hopelessly in love with the Queen, and wander up and down with vague and
dismal thoughts of running away to some uninhabited island with a maid
of honor, to be entrapped by conspiracy for that purpose. Can you
suggest any particular young person, serving in such a capacity, who
would suit me? It is too much perhaps to ask you to join the band of
noble youths (Forster is in it, and Maclise) who are to assist me in
this great enterprise, but a man of your energy would be invaluable. I
have my eye upon Lady . . . , principally because she is very beautiful
and has no strong brothers. Upon this, and other points of the scheme,
however, we will confer more at large when we meet; and meanwhile burn
this document, that no suspicion may arise or rumor get abroad."

The maid of honor and the uninhabited island were flights of fancy, but
the other daring delusion was for a time encouraged to such whimsical
lengths, not alone by him, but (under his influence) by the two friends
named, that it took the wildest forms of humorous extravagance; and of
the private confidences much interchanged, as well as of the style of
open speech in which our joke of despairing unfitness for any further
use or enjoyment of life was unflaggingly kept up, to the amazement of
bystanders knowing nothing of what it meant, and believing we had half
lost our senses, I permit myself to give from his letters one further
illustration. "I am utterly lost in misery," he writes to me on the 12th
of February, "and can do nothing. I have been reading _Oliver_,
_Pickwick_, and _Nickleby_ to get my thoughts together for the new
effort, but all in vain:

"My heart is at Windsor,
My heart isn't here;
My heart is a