In this Conversation we have Landor's art and his tranquil humanism at their best. But when we turn to the modern Conversations we become acquainted with the soldier in him, the writer ever armed, ever ready for the fray, who, assuming a thousand different disguises, exposes and strikes at every form of falsehood and oppression which challenges him to the attack in his character of pagan, republican, and philanthropist. In his 125 _Imaginary Conversations_ he roams, displaying an astonishing amount of information, over the whole face of the earth--from London to China, from Paris to the South Sea Islands; and throughout the whole of history--from Cicero to Bossuet, from Cromwell to Petrarch, from Tasso to Talleyrand; in every country and every age uttering a vigorous protest against tyranny, and speaking a word, sharp as a sword, in the cause of liberty. We overhear what the Empress Catharine and her favourite maid of honour say to each other while they are in the act of murdering the former's husband; and the Conversation in question is not much inferior to one of Vitet's incomparable historical scenes, which are models in this style. We hear Louis XVIII, talking politics with the supercilious, polished Talleyrand, and notice how the uncontrollable longing for plenty of pheasants and pheasants' eggs twines itself, like a scarlet thread, through the web of all His Majesty's political plans. We listen to General Kleber talking with his staff-officers in Egypt, and are conscious of the dissatisfaction with Napoleon's tyrannical measures which runs, like a subdued murmur, through all they say. We are present at the assassination of Kotzebue, and hear Sandt, in the course of his attempts to induce Kotzebue to quit the path he is treading, pronounce his own acquittal.