acity for criticism was
severely reprobated by Landor Senior; but no amount of reproof could
force his son into a confession of sorrow.

"At Oxford," said Landor, "I was about the first student who wore his
hair without powder. 'Take care,' said my tutor. 'They will stone you
for a republican.' The Whigs (not the wigs) were then unpopular; but I
stuck to my plain hair and queue tied with black ribbon."

Of Landor's mature opinion of republics in general we glean much from a
passage of the "Pentameron," in which the author adorns Petrarca with
his own fine thoughts.

"When the familiars of absolute princes taunt us, as they are wont to
do, with the only apothegm they ever learnt by heart,--namely, that it
is better to be ruled by one master than by many,--I quite agree with
them; unity of power being the principle of republicanism, while the
principle of despotism is division and delegation. In the one system,
every man conducts his own affairs, either personally or through the
agency of some trustworthy representative, which is essentially the
same: in the other system, no man, in quality of citizen, has any
affairs of his own to conduct; but a tutor has been as much set over him
as over a lunatic, as little with his option or consent, and without any
provision, as there is in the case of the lunatic, for returning reason.
Meanwhile, the spirit of republics is omnipresent in them, as active in
the particles as in the mass, in the circumference as in the centre.
Eternal it must be, as truth and justice are, although not stationary."

Let Europeans who, having predicted dismemberment of our Union,
proclaimed death to democracy, and those thoughtless Americans who
believe that liberty cannot survive the destruction of our Republic,
think well of what great men have written. Though North America were
submerged to-morrow, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans rushing over our
buried hopes to a riotous embrace, republicanism would live as long as
the elements endure,--borne on every wind, inhaled in every breath of
air, abiding its opportunity to become an active principle. Absorbed in
our own peculiar form of egotism, we believe that a Supreme Being has
cast the cause of humanity upon one die, to prosper or perish by the
chances of our game. What belittling of the Almighty! what magnifying of
ourselves!

Though often urged, Landor never became a candidate for Parliamentary
honors. Political wire-pulling was not to the taste o