The quotation from Keats is very skilfully selected; it must please the most fastidious taste, and is yet sufficiently peculiar to suggest that no one but Keats could have written it. From the writings of W. S. Landor she might have gathered much better, and without devoting to them any larger space than she has done. If she had turned to the miscellaneous poems which conclude his collected works, she might have extracted two or three of the most polished and perfect lyrics in our language, and which have the precise qualification, in this case so indispensable, of being very brief. Mr Landor, by the way, will be much amused to find himself praised--for what will our readers think?--for modesty! "I prefer," says Miss Mitford, "to select from the Hellenics, that charming volume, because very few have given such present life to classical subjects. _I begin with the preface, so full of grace and modesty._" In the lady's mind, grace and modesty are no doubt inseparable companions; and, finding abundance of the one in Mr Landor's style, she concluded that the other must be there also. Of _that other_ there is not an atom in all his writings, and there never was intended to be. It is a maidenly quality which he never had the remotest design of laying claim to. The very preface which she quotes is a piece of undisguised sarcasm. We doubt if there is much grace in it, certainly there is no modesty. Here is the commencement of this modest preface. "It is hardly to be expected that ladies and gentlemen will leave on a sudden their daily promenade, skirted by Turks, and shepherds, and knights, and plumes, and palfreys _of the finest Tunbridge manufacture_, to look at these rude frescoes, delineated on an old wall, high up, and sadly weak in colouring. _As in duty bound, we can wait._" If Miss Mitford should ever read this preface again, she will pass her hand over her brow, a little puzzled where it was she saw the "modesty." She will appeal to Fanchon, who will be sitting in her lap, looking very intently over the page, and ask him what he thinks of the matter. Fanchon will laugh out obstreperously, will bark delighted, at the amiable blunder of his mistress.