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 s