cle through three months of pre-
existence! Meantime, I rest your glad debtor for the good book.
With it came Sterling's _Poems,_ which, in the interim, I have
acknowledged in a letter to him. Sumner has since brought me a
gay letter from yourself, concerning, in part, Landor and Heraud;
in which as I know justice is not done to the one I suppose it is
not done to the other. But Heraud I give up freely to your
tender mercies: I have no wish to save him. Landor can be shorn
of all that is false and foolish, and yet leave a great deal for
me to admire. Many years ago I have read a hundred fine
memorable things in the _Imaginary Conversations,_ though I know
well the faults of that book, and the _Pericles_ and _Aspasia_
within two years has given me delight. I was introduced to the
man Landor when I was in Florence, and he was very kind to me in
answering a multitude of questions. His speech, I remember, was
below his writing. I love the rich variety of his mind, his
proud taste, his penetrating glances, and the poetic loftiness of
his sentiment, which rises now and then to the meridian, though
with the flight, I own, rather of a rocket than an orb, and
terminated sometimes by a sudden tumble. I suspect you of very
short and dashing reading in his books; and yet I should think
you would like him,--both of you such glorious haters of cant.
Forgive me, I have put you two together twenty times in my
thought as the only writers who have the old briskness and
vivacity. But you must leave me to my bad taste and my perverse
and whimsical combinations.

I have written to Mr. Milnes who sent me by Sumner a copy of his
article with a note. I addressed my letter to him at "London,"--
no more. Will it ever reach him? I told him that if I should
print more he would find me worse than ever with my rash,
unwhipped generalization. For my journals, which I dot here at
home day by day, are full of disjointed dreams, audacities,
unsystematic irresponsible lampoons of systems, and all manner of
rambling reveries, the poor drupes and berries I find in my
basket after endless and aimless rambles in woods and pastures.
I ask constantly of all men whether life may not be poetic as
well as stupid?

I shall try and persuade Mr. Calvert, who has sent to me for a
letter to you, to find room in his trunk for a poor lithograph
portrait of our Concord "Battle-field," so called, and village,
that you may see the faint effigy of the f