dation. In the former direction, his scholia upon the classical texts are full of learning and beauty; but when he essayed philology,-of which he had little knowledge in the modern sense, and attempted to regulate the orthography of our language, the result was something lamentable. His vagaries of this sort, I need scarcely add, were persisted in to the exclusion of greater things, and partly, no doubt, because they seemed objectionable to others and positively hindered his career.

While the literary conscientiousness and thoroughly genuine art of Landor's poetry are recognized by all of his own profession, much of it, like certain still-life painting, is chiefly valuable for technical beauty, and admired by the poet rather than by the popular critic. As one might say of Jeremy Taylor that it was impossible, even by chance, that he could write profane or libidinous doctrine, so it seemed impossible for Landor, even in feeble and ill-advised moments, to compose anything that was trite or inartistic. The touch of the master, the quality of the poet, is dominant His voice was sweet, and he could not speak unmusically, though in a rage. His daintiest trifles show this: they are found at random, like precious stones, sometimes broken and incomplete, but every one -so far as it goes-pure in color and absolutely without flaw. A slight object served him for a text, and in honor of a woman who pleased him, but who seemed far enough beneath him to ordinary eyes, he composed eighty-five lyrics that might have beguiled Diana.

over all.

In discoursing upon elevated themes, he was seized with that divine extravagance which possessed the bards of old; and, in verse addressed to persons whom he loved or detested, he took the manner of his favorite classical lyrists, and in every instance went to the extreme of gallant compliment or withering scorn. His determination to have freedom from restraint, at all hazards and any cost, exhibits itself in his poetry and prose. Here he found a liberty, an independence of other rules than his own. judgment or caprice, which he could not enjoy in daily life,-although in conduct, as in letters, he was so obstreperous and unpleasant an opponent that few cared to set themselves in his way. I repeat that, for all his great powers, he was a royal Bohemian in art, as throughout life, and never in poetry composed the ample work which he himself asserted is requisite to establish the greatness of a poet; yet, in a more barren period, one fourth as much as he accomplished sufficed

for the reputation of Goldsmith, Collins, or Gray.

With regard to the fame of Landor it may be said, that, while he has not reached a rank which emboldens any publisher to issue a complete edition of his varied and extensive writings,*- -and even his poems, alone, are not brought together and sold with Byron, Longfellow, Tennyson, and other public favorites,-it is certain, nevertheless, that he has long emerged from that condition in which De Quincey designated him as a man of great genius who might lay claim to a reputation on the basis of not being read. He has gained a hearing from a fit audience, though few, which will have its successors through many generations. To me his fame seems more secure than that of some of his popular contemporaries. If Landor himself had any feeling upon the subject, it was that time would yield him justice. No one could do better without applause, worked less for it, counted less upon it; yet when it came to him he was delighted in a simple way. pleased him by its novelty, and often he pronounced it critical-because it was applause -and over-estimated the bestower: that is, he knew the verdict of his few admirers was correct, and by it gauged their general understanding. He challenged his critics with a perfect consciousness of his own excellence in art; yet only asserted his rights when they were denied him. In all his books there is no whit of cowardice or whining. Nothing could make them morbid and jaundiced, for it was chiefly as an author that he had a religion and conscience, and was capable of self-denial.

It

Landor's prolonged discouragements, however, made him contemptuous of putting out his strength before people who did not properly measure him, and he felt all the loneliness of a man superior to his time. In youth he once or twice betrayed a yearning for appreciation. How nobly and tenderly he expressed it! "I confess to you, if even

At present, the best collection of Landor's works is that made in 1846, of such as he himself then deemed worthy of preservation. A new edition has lately been printed, in 2 vols. 8vo, which can be obtained from Messrs. Scribner, Welford & Armstrong, New York. It contains the Imaginary Conversations, Citation of Shakespeare, Pentameron, Pericles and Aspasia, Gebir, the first series of Hellenics, and most of the author's dramatic and lyric poems which preceded its date of compilation. The later Hellenics, Last Fruit off an Old Tree, Heroic Idyls, Scenes for a Study, etc., can only be procured in separate volumes and pamphlets, and, in bookseller's diction, are fast becoming "rare."

foolish men had read Gebir, I should have continued to write poetry; there is something of summer in the hum of insects." And again: "The popularis aura, though we are ashamed or unable to analyze it, is requisite for the health and growth of genius. Had Gebir been a worse poem, but with more admirers, and I had once filled my sails, I should have made many and perhaps more prosperous voyages. There is almost as much vanity in disdaining the opinion of the world as in pursuing it."

He did not disdain it, but reconciled himself with what heart he might to its absence. In later years he asserted: "I shall have as many readers as I desire to have in other times than ours. I shall dine late; but the dining-room will be well-lighted, the guests few and select." Southey buried himself in work, when galled by his failure to touch the popular heart; Landor in life and action, and in healthful Nature's haunts. The Imaginary Conversations were, to a certain degree, a popular success-at least, were generally known and read by cultured Englishmen ; and for some years their author heartily enjoyed the measure of reputation which he then, for the first time, received. It was during this sunlit period that he addressed a noble ode to Joseph Ablett, containing these impulsive lines:

"I never courted friends or Fame; She pouted at me long, at last she came, And threw her arms around my neck and said, 'Take what hath been for years delayed, And fear not that the leaves will fall One hour the earlier from thy coronal."" Threescore years and ten are the natural term of life, yet we find Landor at that point just leaving the meridian of his strength and splendor. When seventy-one he saw his English writings collected under Forster's supervision, and his renown would have been no less if he had then sung his nunc dimittis and composed no longer. Yet we could not spare that most poetical volume which appeared near the close of the ensuing year. At a dash, he made and printed the English version of his Latin Idyls-written half a lifetime before. We already have classed the " Cupid and Pan," "Dryope," ," "The Children of Venus," with their companion-pieces, as a portion of his choicest work. Five years afterward, in 1853, he gathered up the Last Fruit off an Old Tree, and meant therewith to end his literary labors. To this volume was prefaced the "Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher," -and who but Landor could have written the faultless and pathetic quatrain?

"I strove with none, for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;

I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart." Our author's prose never was more characteristic than in this book, which contained some modern dialogues, much literary and political disquisition, and the delightful critical papers upon Theocritus and Catullus. The poetry consisted of lyrics and epistles, with a stirring dramatic fragment-" The Cenci." Many a time thereafter the poet turned his face to the wall, but could not die: the Gods were unkind, and would not send Iris to clip the sacred lock. He was compelled to live on till nothing but his voice was left him; yet, living, he could not be without expression. In 1857-58 came a pitiful exhibition at Bath, where the old man was enveloped in a swarm of flies and stopped to battle with them; engaged at eighty-two in a dispute about a woman, and sending forth epigrams, like some worn-out, crazy warrior toying with the bow-and-arrows of his childhood. I am thankful to forget all this, when reading the classical dialogues printed in 1863, his eighty-ninth year, under the title of Heroic Idyls. Still more lately were composed the poetical scenes and dialogues given in the closing pages of his biography.

Deaf, lame, and blind, as Landor was,qualis artifex periit! The letters, poems, and criticisms of his last three years of life are full of thought and excellence. The love of

song stayed by him; he was a poet above all, and, like all true poets, young in feeling to the last, and fond of bringing youth and beauty around him. We owe to one enthusiastic girl, in whom both these graces were united, a striking picture of the old minstrel with his foam-white, patriarchal beard, his leonine visage, and head not unlike that of Michael Angelo's "Moses;" and it was to the fresh and eager mind of such a listener, with his own æsthetic sensibilities for the time well pleased, that he offered priceless fragments of wit and courtesy, and expounded the simply perfect canons of his verse. The finest thing we know of Swinburne's life is his pilgrimage to Italy and unselfish reverence at the feet of the incomparable artist, the unconquerable freeman, to whom he

"Came as one whose thoughts half linger,
Half run before;

The youngest to the oldest singer

That England bore."

To some who then for the first time knew Landor, and who were not endowed with the

THE first on the list of African travelers whose discoveries I propose to glance over in this article is Captain Richard Francis Burton.

This great traveler has always appeared to me an eccentric genius, with natural physical and intellectual gifts fitting him to do well almost anything he might undertake. That he does not stand to-day higher than his predecessors or successors in Africa, as he might easily have done, may be ascribed to circumstances which are partly the result of certain peculiarities of his nature, and partly owing to that unsympathetic and superficial society into which he had drifted in India, during early manhood.

A stranger, on seeing Burton for the first time, would be apt to exclaim, "That's a hard-looking man!" But if he were informed that this man was the dauntless being who, in the guise of an Arab merchant, penetrated to Mecca and Harar,-two seats of Mohammedan bigotry, he would be apt to add that he was "just the kind of man to do it, judging by his looks."

Hard is indeed the character of Burton's features. High cheek-bones, gray eyes, set deep in cave-like sockets, shining with a fierce light, with prominent and bristly eyebrows jutting over them like a pent-houseforehead low, and slightly retreating-nose thick, and anything but classic-an upper lip

clothed with a stiff moustache not large enough to hide the sneer in which his lips are set, and jaws vast and square as if settled down into a defiant belligerency-form the tout ensemble of a face that was intended for a born pugilist. His form of medium height, and large-boned, perhaps lends color to this udgment.

Burton is called a "wicked man" by some people. But Burton is more reckless than wicked. He delights to banter feebly intellectual folks and shock their prejudices. His intimate friends, however, looking under the crust of informality and bluntness which covers his real self, discover another man, essentially Burton,-a man not altogether unlovable, a man extremely sociable and delightful, a philosopher, and wise beyond first conception, a conversationalist of rare power, and a scholar who has amassed within the recesses of an extraordinary memory a rich store of Arabic, Persian, and Hindoo lore.

Howsoever Burton endeavors to screen himself under the rough guise of an explorer, the itinerating littérateur peeps out in all his books, especially in the record of his explorations in Africa. But his style, though it evinces scholarship, is abrupt, incohesive, and pedantic. He coins words where a new coinage of them is simply superfluous. In parts it also borders on quaintness, as if he had caught the habit of Sir Thomas More or Roger Bacon.

His powers of composition are most conspicuous in his scenic descriptions. These are so full of fervor and freshness that they appear like sunbeams shining through a dark cloud of fevers, disappointments, calamities, and many-phased trouble, and we get a glimpse, though dim and indistinct, of the reverence for things divine that is latent in him.

This short sketch of the man and his character will serve as a prelude to a few remarks upon his great feat of exploration in Africa.

Captain Burton, accompanied by Captain J. H. Speke, landed at Zanzibar on the 19th December, 1856, both as ignorant of the nature of the work they were about to engage in, and of the mcde to accomplish that work, as any two men could well be. They had been commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society of London to proceed to Central Africa, to discover a lake which was believed to be the source of the River Nile.

On their arrival at Zanzibar, the two travelers were informed that they had come

.

at the wrong season to start, that the proper time to commence their march was in June. But for many reasons this was an advantage; they thus had ample time for preparation, to purchase and pack up the thousand and one impedimenta which they would be compelled to take with them, to study the language, the manners and customs of African tribes, and pick up serviceable information respecting the interior and the different routes which led into it. Some men would have improved the opportunity to do so, and Burton did do something in this way; yet, six months later, when about to depart, I note with astonishment his remark that his "preparations were too hurried."

The donkeys, porters, guides, and armed guard having been collected, the presents for the chiefs and the cloths for barter having been purchased, the two white men and their motley force landed at Kaole, three miles south of Bagamoyo, about the middle of June, 1857. Ten days later, amid doleful forebodings from the Indian merchants, and with kindly words of farewell from the British consul, the first expedition from East Africa resolutely set its face towards the west, and the troublous, harassing march to Ujiji began.

On

In their front they beheld the blue land waves rise in succession one above another, paling in the far distance until they resembled the milky-blue sky which domed them. each side extended sweet landscapes, bounded by shaggy forests, reposing under the tropic heaven, and vivid, spontaneous vegetation all around them. As they looked behind to catch a last solemn glance at what they were leaving, they beheld at their feet the village of Kaole nestling in a palm grove, and beyond this the billows of the Zingian Sea, blown into light playful curls, as the morning landbreeze toyed with them! What solemn thoughts must have filled at this time the minds of the two travelers! To the east was a radiant, sheeny sea; which at this time. possessed an indescribable charm for them : to the west extended a mysterious and sombrous infinity of jungle and forest-perhaps full of lurking terrors, disease and death!

The two travelers soon found that they had engaged in no child's play. Their troubles grew thickly. The undisciplined mob they were leading towards the interior gave them great trouble; some clamored for tobacco, others for guitar strings, and their guards-donkey drivers from their birth-complained of the indignity of being required to drive asses. Their guides also, after receiving their advance, deserted them, and the Ba

looch soldiers insulted the white men. Subsequently there was not one person attached to this expedition who did not at some time or other attempt to desert. On the second day out they were mulcted by a contumacious chief of a large quantity of cloth, and on the fourth day a hyena attacked and killed three asses belonging to the expedition.

On the 8th of July, after struggling through a low and unhealthy district, they reached what the Arabs call "The Valley of Death, and the Home of Hunger," a broad plain traversed by the Kingani River. The water was everywhere bad, a mortal smell of decay pervaded the atmosphere, and both Burton and Speke were so affected by fever that they were unable to walk.

Burton's account of his journey through the land of Ugogo is exceedingly interesting, but is marred greatly by the lachrymal outpourings of a temper already greatly embittered by bile, and trouble with the ferocious and utterly intractable people he had to deal with.

Ugogo, which is generally reached in two months by caravans traveling inland, is the halfway district between the coast and Unyanyembe the central province of the Land of the Moon. The people are a mongrel race, a mixture of the tribes of the mountains and the interior table-land. The plains are rich in grain, and the hills with cattle. Milk, honey, eggs and clarified butter are sold by the people readily for American sheeting and beads. The district abounds in game and elephants, and giraffes are frequently met.

After being subjected for several successive days to much contumely and abuse, the travelers, on the 12th October, 1857, shook the red dust of Ugogo from their feet, and on the 7th day of November, the one hundred and thirty-fourth day from the coast, they arrived in Unyanyembe, where they were received with open arms by the hospitable Arab merchants dwelling there. It may be presumed that this was the only day of real pleasure that Burton enjoyed since leaving the coast, and that the sight of his caravan, after so many vicissitudes, wriggling snakelike over the plain, each member of it boiling over with uncontrollable delight, while horns boomed, and muskets roared like saluting mortars, must have puckered his face on this day into a hundred smiles.

The great labor, however, lay yet unaccomplished, the inland sea was yet undiscovered; and so the expedition is found, after a month's detention at Unyanyembe, sallying out of its enclosed camp, bound for Ujiji.

Burton's account of the journey from Unyanyembe to Ujiji is replete with interest, and contains passages of great beauty. The latter place was distant from Unyanyembe 260 miles, and was reached on the 13th February, 1858. The character of the intervening country was undulating ground, intersected with low conical and tabular hills, whose lines ramified in all directions. Dur ing the rainy season the country is clad in vivid green. In the dry season it has a grayish aspect, "lighted up by golden stubbles, and dotted with wind-distorted trees, shallow swamps of emerald grass, and wide sheets of dark mud."

Altogether, Unyamwezi presents a scene of peaceful beauty. Burton says: "Few scenes are more soothing than a view of this country in the balmy evenings of spring, and the charm of the glorious sunsets with thei orange glows, and their quickly-changing variegated colors, affects even the unimaginative Africans as they sit under the eaves of their huts or under the forest trees to gaze upon the glories around.

Upon surmounting a range of mountains which surround the lake on all sides, the great inland sea dawned upon their joy-lit eyes. Though the first view of it was disappointing, the great lake Tanganika shortly revealed itself in all its beauty and extent.

Sad, indeed, was the condition of the two travelers when they arrived at Ujiji. Burton was half paralyzed, and Speke was half blind. They had paid a fearful penalty for the privilege of first discovering the great lake.

Soon after their arrival upon the palmclothed shores of the Tanganika, Burton and Speke set out to resolve the problem of the Rusizi, a river which was said to either run out of the lake or run into it, at its northern extremity. They were unsuccessful, and Burton, to retaliate upon the stubborn untractable natives, fills pages of his book with fierce abuse of them. His ambitious struggle for the mastery over African geography ceased from this time, and Speke is henceforth permitted to come to the front, to cope with the difficulties, and to finally emerge from the contest with honor and credit to himself. Hence ensued fault-finding between the two, bickerings, jealousies, and heart-burnings.

On the return of the travelers to Unyanyembe, Burton, wearied with African travel, and sore in mind and body, gave permission to Speke to set out by himself towards the north. After fifty-two days' absence, Speke returned to his companion, and quietly announced the discovery of the Lake Victoria