You say your letter is egotistic. It is its greatest merit. Real friends wish for such letters only. I know nobody else in Rome but Gibson and Miss Ironsides. Oh, yes, little Ewing, if he is still alive? All our little clique are dispersed, and the greatest part of them in the land of spirits, freed from this temporary exile called life, which leaves not a wreck behind, or a few pictures to be soon destroyed by cleaners, etc.! Vanitas vanitatum! Alas, poor Titian, etc.!

I don't know any person alive who can even remember either of my grandfathers, and they were remarkable men. One was the first Latin scholar in England, and the other had a museum of arts and antiquities, all dispersed and gone, like their dust. But we never really die; twenty minutes of insensibility in a trance is all. We awake and find ourselves in the midst of our dearest old friends. The bad man avoids them from an instinct of shame, and seeks his equals, by whom he is persecuted until he is saved and relieved by good spirits. We are all sons of God, even the worst assassin. We are not responsible for our constitutions or our education, and there are no eternal pitchforks, brimstone, or hell, nor any such successful rival to God as Monseigneur le Diable. This rests on better authority than any book. It is curious that Moses, in all his books, never says one word about a future state. Of what use is religion without it?

I am writing you a sermon instead of a letter. A nap will do you good. Do you remember Dean Swift's pews, in his Baucis and Philemon? - and I often laugh at the remembrance of Dennis Brulgruddery, the pew-opener, who was turned away because he snored so loud that he woke all the congregation.

I remember how that old Westmacott used to retail his good things at Rome,

is he always the same ? - and you at Torlonia's masquerades, and the farces

you used to play on dear old Gibson,1 and his tortoises, and my adventures at Poli in the midst of the brigands with Mary Graham, née Dundas, afterwards Lady Callcott. Lord and Lady Normanby were a good deal here and had grown detestable, he with his black ringlets, and she a porpoise; and detestably he has signalized his hatred of Italy. The Jockey Club of Florence has expelled him, and his prating twaddle goes on in that House of Humbug, temporal and spiritual.

We have the King here at the Pitti. I expect to see Sir J. Hudson. He generally comes here with the King. One can't judge from portraits, but I should think that our new princess will wear the breeches. The Guelph face is not promising, — jowl and goggle eyes; but our Queen has been an exception to the vile race. The melancholy sight of her at the marriage would have given me more pain than the pleasure of all that procession. I suppose she was not acting a part. There is many a waitingwoman knows more than we do. She does not part with her son as she was obliged to do with her daughters. That was one comfort for her.

Trelawny used to say, "There are but two passions of love, the mother's and the lover's. By God, they 'll go through fire for you; all the rest is humbug."

My affection for my little girl is much increased. She is nine and a half, and more of a friend. At first she was only a baby. You have had more experience. They want me to send her to England, but I won't part with her, and she knows not a word of the language. She would be as bad as deaf and dumb, and with none but strange faces, troppo trista! I want to secure her here with a good guardian after me. She goes to school daily. I care less for learning than happiness.

Adieu, my dear old friend.

VI. FROM THE SAME. FLORENCE, PONTE VECCHIO 2, June 23, 1864.

MY DEAR SEVERN, Your last let ter was answered so long ago that I don't remember what it contained. I should have written again, but supposed that you were so engaged in diplomacy that you would find me troublesome. I wanted to recommend to you my friend Daniel Home, but I was sure if he wanted protection he would be sure to find it in you, who have done so much good to your countrymen and others, and I foresaw he would need it to defend him against the Jesuits and priests, who are, of course, omnipotent in Rome; and so it turned out, and I saw from the newspapers that you had done all you could for him. I can answer for his be ing neither an impostor nor a sorcerer (which is absurd), and I have found him a man of honor, by actions, not by words of his or hearsay of others, and I know him to be very generous though poor, and good-hearted. All which is in his favor, and so likewise are the phenomena that spontaneously accompany him, and of which I have had sufficient experience in my own house, watched and guarded with the most suspicious incredulity, which is stronger with me than with most people, as perhaps you may remember, for I was always so.

My own proofs of our existence after death are entirely independent of Home, and began before I knew him or the works of Judge Edmonds, which confirmed them, and they settled my creed, very far from a canonical one, either Roman or Calvinistic, which, entre nous, are about equally blasphemous and Jewish. But I will not write all I could, for fear this should never reach you. I doubt if all your letters have come to me, and the one I have just received was left for me (I was out) by a priest! I know the Frescobaldis and Mr. Hart.

Do you ever see Miss Ironsides? Α

friend of hers lately came to see me. Miss Ironsides was gifted as a medium, but her weak vulgar mother extinguished her, and encouraged her in commonplace studies under the direction of snobs when she might have been a painter of the imagination, like my old friend William Blake, who I thought was mad, though I don't think so now.

Flaxman, Stothard, and Fuseli were all suspected, and so were Danby, Varley, and even Martin. Anyhow they were original, and showed mind; and even old West was sometimes a mystic, and Barry and Loutherburg.

After I proved the truth of Spiritualism, which I scouted for a long time, I was induced to follow up my experiments in hopes of some day seeing something worthy to paint. I longed for a good vision, and do still, but I am not enough of a medium. I have only seen, heard, and felt enough to be sure of the existence of spirits. Neither books nor men were enough for me, and I sought witnesses of my experience, and would not rely on my own impressions alone, which might have been effects of imagination, waking dreams!

But when half a dozen people were present, they could not all be dreaming of the same thing. A lady wrote to me the other day that Home had been raised in the air a hundred times since he came to London, and had been seen by a thousand people. Basta! you have doubtless heard enough about it, and I have seen enough in my own house.

What are you doing in painting? Bible subjects are worn out, and were never interesting to me. I have an Italian book that says the Madonna ought to be painted ugly, as she was sixty when she died. Young John lived to a hundred, and was buried, but never died; his grave moves. He is waiting for the last day to fulfill the prophecies. Read Sir John Mandeville's travels in the East in 1345, an orthodox Englishman! I have been long an admirer of Dante,

Here is too long a yarn for a busy man like you. I wonder if you could get for me the report of a trial in Rome, printed about fifteen years ago, of a Count Alberti, for forging and selling some manuscripts of Tasso. If you could secure me a copy, I will take care to repay you and let you have the reading of it before you send it me, either by the post or private hand. It is very curious and would amuse you. Tasso was in favor with good spirits like Socrates. Adieu, dear Severn.

Yours affectionately,

S. KIRKUP.

VII. FROM THE SAME.
FLORENCE, 2, PONTE VECCHIO,

primo po, April 4, 1868. MY DEAR SEVERN, -The sight of your handwriting gave me great pleasure. I knew it again directly. After so many years that I have known you, about fifty, I think! How strange it is that the writing and the mind remain the same, though our carcasses have been entirely changed and renewed above sixteen times in that period! So says Liebig, the greatest physiologist of the age. I have been following that study lately, having been too long engrossed by that of psychology, and I have found them both full of wonders.

Have you heard that the King has made me a knight and a baron? For some discoveries I made in Florence respecting Dante, so I suppose; all that is said in my diploma and other papers is, "In considerazione di particolari benemerenze." I never knew more, and the minister who recommended me to him died of the cholera in Sicily. He was a Sicilian, and I had never heard his name till then (Natoli), or knew any of

to me, always the same poor devil of a painter, on which account I only call myself chevalier. I am not rich enough to live in baronial state. Poor knights are common enough, even at Windsor! Painters never get beyond the rank of knight, Sir Peter Paul, Sir Anthony, Sir Peter, Sir Godfrey, down to Sir Joshua, etc., etc.

In Paris I knew three painters in 1816 whom Napoleon I. had created barons, David, Gros, and Gérard, whose sons are now senators, diplomats, etc. Marochetti, who lately died in England, was an Italian baron, and there is a landscape painter, whose name I forget.

I have no news to tell you. The government and the chambers are all engrossed by the reform of the finances. They have a difficult task, and have neglected it too long. If they don't succeed now it will soon be too late. What think you of Bonaparte's dodge to keep Italy divided, by offering the Venetians their ancient republic, and their refusal of it in order to join Italy? We live in strange times. I have always observed Monseigneur Bonaparte, now his Eminence, next his Sanctity. That is what they are aiming at. Besides that, a king of Rome is looming in the distance, and at one time a King Murat was in view for Naples. A friend of yours said the other day, You have only changed masters, - French instead of Germans. Basta! one must not talk politics to you. Your position is delicately neutral, and you have enough to do in your official capacity with your benevolence.

on

I was very sorry to hear of Miss Ironsides' death. Her mother came to me her way to England. I showed her a drawing of a vision she (Miss I.) had drawn in my house, which vision she saw in a crystal ball. The mother kissed it and shed tears. It was remorse for taking her from Florence to

Rome, to paint vulgar, worn-out Bible subjects that nobody cares for any longer, they are so commonplace in Catholic churches, and excluded in Protestant ones; whilst the Catholics forbid the Bible, of which they are afraid, and perhaps ashamed, like our poor friend Charles Brown, whose son is, I believe, alive. Do you know? I heard a long time ago that he was very prosperous in New Zealand. Brown had been a good friend of Keats. They wrote a tragedy together (Otho).1

I hear that Keats's monument is already in ruin. The English in Rome might subscribe a trifle to restore it. Shelley's is in fine preservation. We were together at his funeral. I should have attended Keats's, but I was in bed with the fever. Old Morgan died here not long ago. He was near ninety, Landor ditto, and one old English painter, Giacomo Smith, one hundred and six

teen.

If you see Mrs. Trelawny, remember me to her. She is a very superior woman, and her daughter a fine creature. Is Desoulavy alive and in Rome? An excellent fellow, sincere and unaffected. What became of Ewing, Evans, Lane, Renny, McDonald, Tenerani, Agricola, Minardi, Snetz, and all the Frenchmen? I met Madame Terlink the other day, and the Genoese miniature-painter, whose name I forget. I think he married Moschi's sister.

I am living now with a little daughter. She is now fourteen. Her maid is an ex-nun, very good, and glad to be

1 I have come across more than one statement to this effect. But the mistaken idea is probably due to the fact that Trelawny used to say that most of the mottoes heading his chapters in The Adventures of a Younger

free. They are both mediums, the former ever since she was two years old. If you have ever been photographed, send me one. I shall value it. Adieu, my dear old friend.

Yours very sincerely,

SEYMOUR KIRKUP.

Seymour Kirkup first met Severn at the interment of Shelley's ashes in the old cemetery of Monte Testaccio, in Rome, and he died before his friend was laid beside the other great poet with whom his name is so closely associated. Charles Brown, who died at Taranaki, New Zealand, in 1842, was not "ashamed" of the Bible; but he was a deist, and to the last refused to have anything to do with official exponents of Christianity. Though he died at that then remote settlement, his burial was attended by two men of a different stamp from his fellow pioneer-colonists: John George Cooke, an intimate friend of Trelawny's, and the late Alfred Domett, so much better known, doubtless, by the name of "Waring," conferred upon him by Robert Browning. Among the Severn manuscripts is a long letter from Mr. Domett, in which he states that he purchased at Buffalo, N. Y., so long ago as 1826, an American edition of Keats's and Shelley's poems. This was about the same time that the youthful poet Browning tried in vain to obtain a copy of Shelley's writings in his part of London, where no booksellers kept such an unsalable book as the poems of unknown John Keats.

William Sharp.

Son (written in great part during his stay with Brown in Florence) were "from Brown's and Keats's drama, Otho." The manuscript belonged to Brown after Keats's death, but he was not joint author.