pirator. He conspired from pure love of liberty, for which at any
moment he was ready to die. Those who merely know Orsini by the last act
of his life can have no proper appreciation of the wonderful purity and
nobility of his character. In his attempt to assassinate Louis Napoleon,
he was actuated by as exalted motives as led Charlotte Corday to do a
bloody deed. Exiled, a price upon his head, deceived by those in whom he
had put faith, in despair at the state of Italian affairs, Orsini
committed what he himself, in a letter to his intended victim, Napoleon,
confessed to be _un fatale errore mentale_,--assassination being in
direct opposition to the faith and facts of his life up to the
conspiracy of the 14th of January. For this fatal error he offered his
own blood as an expiatory sacrifice. Few nobler heads than Orsini's have
bowed before the guillotine.

In "Pericles and Aspasia," Cleone has written with Landor's pen, that
"study is the bane of boyhood, the aliment of youth, the indulgence of
manhood, and the restorative of old age." Of this theory there could be
no better example than Landor's self. That life which outlasted all the
friends of its zenith was made endurable by a constant devotion to the
greatest works of the greatest men. Milton and Shakespeare were his
constant companions, by night as well as by day. "I never tire of them,"
he would say; "they are always a revelation. And how grand is Milton's
prose! quite as fine as his poetry!" He was very fond of repeating the
following celebrated lines that have the true ring to a tuneful ear as
well as to an appreciative intellect:--

"But when God commands to take the trumpet
And blow a dolorous or thrilling blast,
It rests not with man's will what he shall say
Or what he shall conceal."

"Was anything more harmonious ever written?" Landor would ask. "But
Milton, you know, is old-fashioned. I believe _I_ am old-fashioned.
However, it is rather an honor to be classed thus, if one may keep such
distinguished company." How devoted a student of Milton Landor was is
evidenced in his delightful critical conversation between Southey and
himself, wherein he declared, "Such stupendous genius, so much fancy, so
much eloquence, so much vigor of intellect never were united as in
Paradise Lost." Yet the lover is still an impartial critic, and does not
indorse all things. Quoting the charming couplet,

"Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,