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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Lady Byron Vindicated, by Harriet Beecher
+Stowe
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Lady Byron Vindicated
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: November 16, 2004  [eBook #14061]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY BYRON VINDICATED***
+
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler.
+
+
+
+
+
+LADY BYRON VINDICATED
+BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
+
+
+A history of the Byron Controversy from its beginning in 1816 to the
+present time.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE BY THE PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+The subject of this volume is of such painful notoriety that any apology
+from the Publishers may seem unnecessary upon issuing the Author's reply
+to the counter statements which her narrative in Macmillan's Magazine has
+called forth.  Nevertheless they consider it right to state that their
+strong regard for the Author, respect for her motives, and assurance of
+her truthfulness, would, even in the absence of all other considerations,
+be sufficient to induce them to place their imprint on the title-page.
+
+The publication has been undertaken by them at the Author's request, 'as
+her friends,' and as the publishers of her former works, and from a
+feeling that whatever difference of opinion may be entertained respecting
+the Author's judiciousness in publishing 'The True Story,' she is
+entitled to defend it, having been treated with grave injustice, and
+often with much maliciousness, by her critics and opponents, and been
+charged with motives from which no person living is more free.  An
+intense love of justice and hatred of oppression, with an utter disregard
+of her own interests, characterise Mrs. Stowe's conduct and writings, as
+all who know her well will testify; and the Publishers can unhesitatingly
+affirm their belief that neither fear for loss of her literary fame, nor
+hope of gain, has for one moment influenced her in the course she has
+taken.
+
+                                    LONDON: January 1870.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+CHAPTER I.    INTRODUCTION
+CHAPTER II.   THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON
+CHAPTER III.  RESUME OF THE CONSPIRACY
+CHAPTER IV.   RESULTS AFTER LORD BYRON'S DEATH
+CHAPTER V.    THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON'S GRAVE
+
+PART II.
+
+CHAPTER I.    LADY BYRON AS I KNEW HER
+CHAPTER II.   LADY BYRON'S STORY AS TOLD ME
+CHAPTER III.  CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS
+CHAPTER IV.   THE CHARACTER OF THE TWO WITNESSES COMPARED
+CHAPTER V.    THE DIRECT ARGUMENT TO PROVE THE CRIME
+CHAPTER VI.   PHYSIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
+CHAPTER VII.  HOW COULD SHE LOVE HIM?
+CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION
+
+PART III.  MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS.
+
+THE TRUE STORY OF LADY BYRON'S LIFE (AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 'THE
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY')
+LORD LINDSAY'S LETTER TO 'THE LONDON TIMES'
+DR. FORBES WINSLOW'S LETTER TO 'THE LONDON TIMES'
+EXTRACT FROM LORD BYRON'S EXPUNGED LETTER TO MURRAY
+EXTRACTS FROM 'BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE'
+LETTERS OF LADY BYRON TO H. C. ROBINSON
+DOMESTIC POEMS BY LORD BYRON
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.  INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The interval since my publication of 'The True Story of Lady Byron's
+Life' has been one of stormy discussion and of much invective.
+
+I have not thought it necessary to disturb my spirit and confuse my sense
+of right by even an attempt at reading the many abusive articles that
+both here and in England have followed that disclosure.  Friends have
+undertaken the task for me, giving me from time to time the substance of
+anything really worthy of attention which came to view in the tumult.
+
+It appeared to me essential that this first excitement should in a
+measure spend itself before there would be a possibility of speaking to
+any purpose.  Now, when all would seem to have spoken who can speak, and,
+it is to be hoped, have said the utmost they can say, there seems a
+propriety in listening calmly, if that be possible, to what I have to say
+in reply.
+
+And, first, why have I made this disclosure at all?
+
+_To this I answer briefly, Because I considered it my duty to make it_.
+
+I made it in defence of a beloved, revered friend, whose memory stood
+forth in the eyes of the civilised world charged with most repulsive
+crimes, of which I _certainly_ knew her innocent.
+
+I claim, and shall prove, that Lady Byron's reputation has been the
+victim of a concerted attack, begun by her husband during her lifetime,
+and coming to its climax over her grave.  I claim, and shall prove, that
+it was not I who stirred up this controversy in this year 1869.  I shall
+show _who did do it_, and who is responsible for bringing on me that hard
+duty of making these disclosures, which it appears to me ought to have
+been made by others.
+
+I claim that these facts were given to me unguarded by any promise or
+seal of secrecy, expressed or implied; that they were lodged with me as
+one sister rests her story with another for sympathy, for counsel, for
+defence.  _Never_ did I suppose the day would come that I should be
+subjected to so cruel an anguish as this use of them has been to me.
+Never did I suppose that,--when those kind hands, that had shed nothing
+but blessings, were lying in the helplessness of death, when that gentle
+heart, so sorely tried and to the last so full of love, was lying cold in
+the tomb,--a countryman in England could be found to cast the foulest
+slanders on her grave, and not one in all England to raise an effective
+voice in her defence.
+
+I admit the feebleness of my plea, in point of execution.  It was written
+in a state of exhausted health, when no labour of the kind was safe for
+me,--when my hand had not strength to hold the pen, and I was forced to
+dictate to another.
+
+I have been told that I have no reason to congratulate myself on it as a
+literary effort.  O my brothers and sisters! is there then nothing in the
+world to think of but literary efforts?  I ask any man with a heart in
+his bosom, if he had been obliged to tell a story so cruel, because his
+mother's grave gave no rest from slander,--I ask any woman who had been
+forced to such a disclosure to free a dead sister's name from grossest
+insults, whether she would have thought of making this work of bitterness
+a literary success?
+
+Are the cries of the oppressed, the gasps of the dying, the last prayers
+of mothers,--are _any_ words wrung like drops of blood from the human
+heart to be judged as literary efforts?
+
+My fellow-countrymen of America, men of the press, I have done you one
+act of justice,--of all your bitter articles, I have read not one.  I
+shall never be troubled in the future time by the remembrance of any
+unkind word you have said of me, for at this moment I recollect not one.
+I had such faith in you, such pride in my countrymen, as men with whom,
+above all others, the cause of woman was safe and sacred, that I was at
+first astonished and incredulous at what I heard of the course of the
+American press, and was silent, not merely from the impossibility of
+being heard, but from grief and shame.  But reflection convinces me that
+you were, in many cases, acting from a misunderstanding of facts and
+through misguided honourable feeling; and I still feel courage,
+therefore, to ask from you a fair hearing.  Now, as I have done you this
+justice, will you also do me the justice to hear me seriously and
+candidly?
+
+What interest have you or I, my brother and my sister, in this short life
+of ours, to utter anything but the truth?  Is not truth between man and
+man and between man and woman the foundation on which all things rest?
+Have you not, every individual of you, who must hereafter give an account
+yourself alone to God, an interest to know the exact truth in this
+matter, and a duty to perform as respects that truth?  Hear me, then,
+while I tell you the position in which I stood, and what was my course in
+relation to it.
+
+A shameless attack on my friend's memory had appeared in the 'Blackwood'
+of July 1869, branding Lady Byron as the vilest of criminals, and
+recommending the Guiccioli book to a Christian public as interesting from
+the very fact that it was the avowed production of Lord Byron's mistress.
+No efficient protest was made against this outrage in England, and
+Littell's 'Living Age' reprinted the 'Blackwood' article, and the
+Harpers, the largest publishing house in America, perhaps in the world,
+re-published the book.
+
+Its statements--with those of the 'Blackwood,' 'Pall Mall Gazette,' and
+other English periodicals--were being propagated through all the young
+reading and writing world of America.  I was meeting them advertised in
+dailies, and made up into articles in magazines, and thus the generation
+of to-day, who had no means of judging Lady Byron but by these fables of
+her slanderers, were being foully deceived.  The friends who knew her
+personally were a small select circle in England, whom death is every day
+reducing.  They were few in number compared with the great world, and
+were _silent_.  I saw these foul slanders crystallising into history
+uncontradicted by friends who knew her personally, who, firm in their own
+knowledge of her virtues and limited in view as aristocratic circles
+generally are, had no idea of the width of the world they were living in,
+and the exigency of the crisis.  When time passed on and no voice was
+raised, I spoke.  I gave at first a simple story, for I knew
+instinctively that whoever put the first steel point of truth into this
+dark cloud of slander must wait for the storm to spend itself.  I must
+say the storm exceeded my expectations, and has raged loud and long.  But
+now that there is a comparative stillness I shall proceed, first, to
+prove what I have just been asserting, and, second, to add to my true
+story such facts and incidents as I did not think proper at first to
+state.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.  THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON.
+
+
+In proving what I asserted in the first chapter, I make four points:
+
+1st.  A concerted attack upon Lady Byron's reputation, begun by Lord
+Byron in self-defence.
+
+2nd.  That he transmitted his story to friends to be continued after his
+death.
+
+3rd.  That they did so continue it.
+
+4th.  That the accusations reached their climax over Lady Byron's grave
+in 'Blackwood' of 1869, and the Guiccioli book, and that this re-opening
+of the controversy was my reason for speaking.
+
+And first I shall adduce my proofs that Lady Byron's reputation was,
+during the whole course of her husband's life, the subject of a
+concentrated, artfully planned attack, commencing at the time of the
+separation and continuing during his life.  By various documents
+carefully prepared, and used publicly or secretly as suited the case, he
+made converts of many honest men, some of whom were writers and men of
+letters, who put their talents at his service during his lifetime in
+exciting sympathy for him, and who, by his own request, felt bound to
+continue their defence of him after he was dead.
+
+In order to consider the force and significance of the documents I shall
+cite, we are to bring to our view just the issues Lord Byron had to meet,
+both at the time of the separation and for a long time after.
+
+In Byron's 'Memoirs,' Vol. IV. Letter 350, under date December 10, 1819,
+nearly four years after the separation, he writes to Murray in a state of
+great excitement on account of an article in 'Blackwood,' in which his
+conduct towards his wife had been sternly and justly commented on, and
+which he supposed to have been written by Wilson, of the 'Noctes
+Ambrosianae.'  He says in this letter: 'I like and admire W---n, and he
+should not have indulged himself in such outrageous license. . . . .  When
+he talks of Lady Byron's business he talks of what he knows nothing
+about; and you may tell him _no man can desire a public investigation of
+that affair more than I do_.' {7}
+
+He shortly after wrote and sent to Murray a pamphlet for publication,
+which was printed, but not generally circulated till some time
+afterwards.  Though more than three years had elapsed since the
+separation, the current against him at this time was so strong in England
+that his friends thought it best, at first, to use this article of Lord
+Byron's discreetly with influential persons rather than to give it to the
+public.
+
+The writer in 'Blackwood' and the indignation of the English public, of
+which that writer was the voice, were now particularly stirred up by the
+appearance of the first two cantos of 'Don Juan,' in which the indecent
+caricature of Lady Byron was placed in vicinity with other indecencies,
+the publication of which was justly considered an insult to a Christian
+community.
+
+It must here be mentioned, for the honour of Old England, that at first
+she did her duty quite respectably in regard to 'Don Juan.'  One can
+still read, in Murray's standard edition of the poems, how every
+respectable press thundered reprobations, which it would be well enough
+to print and circulate as tracts for our days.
+
+Byron, it seems, had thought of returning to England, but he says, in the
+letter we have quoted, that he has changed his mind, and shall not go
+back, adding 'I have finished the Third Canto of "Don Juan," but the
+things I have heard and read discourage all future publication.  You may
+try the copy question, but you'll lose it; the cry is up, and the cant is
+up.  I should have no objection to return the price of the copyright, and
+have written to Mr. Kinnaird on this subject.'
+
+One sentence quoted by Lord Byron from the 'Blackwood' article will show
+the modern readers what the respectable world of that day were thinking
+and saying of him:--
+
+   'It appears, in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted
+   _every species_ of sensual gratification--having drained the cup of
+   sin even to its bitterest dregs--were resolved to show us that he is
+   no longer a human being even in his frailties, but a cool, unconcerned
+   fiend, laughing with detestable glee over the whole of the better and
+   worse elements of which human life is composed.'
+
+The defence which Lord Byron makes, in his reply to that paper, is of a
+man cornered and fighting for his life.  He speaks thus of the state of
+feeling at the time of his separation from his wife:--
+
+   'I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private
+   rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my
+   fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was
+   tainted.  I felt that, if what was whispered and muttered and murmured
+   was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me.
+   I withdrew; but this was not enough.  In other countries--in
+   Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the
+   lakes--I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight.  I crossed
+   the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and
+   settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who
+   betakes him to the waters.
+
+   'If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered
+   round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all
+   precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives
+   have sharpened slander and doubled enmity.  I was advised not to go to
+   the theatres lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty in parliament
+   lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the day of my departure
+   my most intimate friend told me afterwards that he was under the
+   apprehension of violence from the people who might be assembled at the
+   door of the carriage.'
+
+Now Lord Byron's charge against his wife was that SHE was directly
+responsible for getting up and keeping up this persecution, which drove
+him from England,--that she did it in a deceitful, treacherous manner,
+which left him no chance of defending himself.
+
+He charged against her that, taking advantage of a time when his affairs
+were in confusion, and an execution in the house, she left him suddenly,
+with treacherous professions of kindness, which were repeated by letters
+on the road, and that soon after her arrival at her home her parents sent
+him word that she would never return to him, and she confirmed the
+message; that when he asked the reason why, she refused to state any; and
+that when this step gave rise to a host of slanders against him she
+silently encouraged and confirmed the slanders.  His claim was that he
+was denied from that time forth even the justice of any tangible
+accusation against himself which he might meet and refute.
+
+He observes, in the same article from which we have quoted:--
+
+   'When one tells me that I cannot "in any way _justify_ my own
+   behaviour in that affair," I acquiesce, because no man can "_justify_"
+   himself until he knows of what he is accused; and I have never
+   had--and, God knows, my whole desire has ever been to obtain it--any
+   specific charge, in a tangible shape, submitted to me by the
+   adversary, nor by others, unless the atrocities of public rumour and
+   the mysterious silence of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed
+   such.'
+
+Lord Byron, his publishers, friends, and biographers, thus agree in
+representing his wife as the secret author and abettor of that
+persecution, which it is claimed broke up his life, and was the source of
+all his subsequent crimes and excesses.
+
+Lord Byron wrote a poem in September 1816, in Switzerland, just after the
+separation, in which he stated, in so many words, these accusations
+against his wife.  Shortly after the poet's death Murray published this
+poem, together with the 'Fare thee well,' and the lines to his sister,
+under the title of 'Domestic Pieces,' in his standard edition of Byron's
+poetry.  It is to be remarked, then, that this was for some time a
+private document, shown to confidential friends, and made use of
+judiciously, as readers or listeners to his story were able to bear it.
+Lady Byron then had a strong party in England.  Sir Samuel Romilly and
+Dr. Lushington were her counsel.  Lady Byron's parents were living, and
+the appearance in the public prints of such a piece as this would have
+brought down an aggravated storm of public indignation.
+
+For the general public such documents as the 'Fare thee well' were
+circulating in England, and he frankly confessed his wife's virtues and
+his own sins to Madame de Stael and others in Switzerland, declaring
+himself in the wrong, sensible of his errors, and longing to cast himself
+at the feet of that serene perfection,
+
+   'Which wanted one sweet weakness--to forgive.'
+
+But a little later he drew for his private partisans this bitter poetical
+indictment against her, which, as we have said, was used discreetly
+during his life, and published after his death.
+
+Before we proceed to lay that poem before the reader we will refresh his
+memory with some particulars of the tragedy of AEschylus, which Lord
+Byron selected as the exact parallel and proper illustration of his
+wife's treatment of himself.  In his letters and journals he often
+alludes to her as Clytemnestra, and the allusion has run the round of a
+thousand American papers lately, and been read by a thousand good honest
+people, who had no very clear idea who Clytemnestra was, and what she did
+which was like the proceedings of Lady Byron.  According to the tragedy,
+Clytemnestra secretly hates her husband Agamemnon, whom she professes to
+love, and wishes to put him out of the way that she may marry her lover,
+AEgistheus.  When her husband returns from the Trojan war she receives
+him with pretended kindness, and officiously offers to serve him at the
+bath.  Inducing him to put on a garment, of which she had adroitly sewed
+up the sleeves and neck so as to hamper the use of his arms, she gives
+the signal to a concealed band of assassins, who rush upon him and stab
+him.  Clytemnestra is represented by AEschylus as grimly triumphing in
+her success, which leaves her free to marry an adulterous paramour.
+
+   'I did it, too, in such a cunning wise,
+   That he could neither 'scape nor ward off doom.
+   I staked around his steps an endless net,
+   As for the fishes.'
+
+In the piece entitled 'Lines on hearing Lady Byron is ill,' Lord Byron
+charges on his wife a similar treachery and cruelty.  The whole poem is
+in Murray's English edition, Vol. IV. p. 207.  Of it we quote the
+following.  The reader will bear in mind that it is addressed to Lady
+Byron on a sick-bed:--
+
+   'I am too well avenged, but 't was my right;
+   Whate'er my sins might be, _thou_ wert not sent
+   To be the Nemesis that should requite,
+   Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
+   Mercy is for the merciful!  If thou
+   Hast been of such, 't will be accorded now.
+   Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep,
+   For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep;
+   Yes! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel
+   A hollow agony that will not heal.
+   Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap
+   The bitter harvest in a woe as real.
+   _I have had many foes, but none like thee_;
+   For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,
+   And be avenged, or turn them into friend;
+   But thou, in safe implacability,
+   Hast naught to dread,--in thy own weakness shielded,
+   And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
+   And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.
+   And thus upon the world, trust in thy truth,
+   And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,--
+   On things that were not and on things that are,--
+   Even upon such a basis thou halt built
+   A monument whose cement hath been guilt!
+   The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,
+   And hewed down with an unsuspected sword
+   Fame, peace, and hope, and all that better life
+   Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
+   Might yet have risen from the grave of strife
+   And found a nobler duty than to part.
+   But of thy virtues thou didst make a vice,
+   Trafficking in them with a purpose cold,
+   And buying others' woes at any price,
+   For present anger and for future gold;
+   And thus, once entered into crooked ways,
+   The early truth, that was thy proper praise,
+   Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,
+   And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
+   Deceits, averments incompatible,
+   Equivocations, and the thoughts that dwell
+   _In Janus spirits, the significant eye
+   That learns to lie with silence_, {14} the pretext
+   Of prudence with advantages annexed,
+   The acquiescence in all things that tend,
+   No matter how, to the desired end,--
+   All found a place in thy philosophy.
+   The means were worthy and the end is won.
+   I would not do to thee as thou hast done.'
+
+Now, if this language means anything, it means, in plain terms, that,
+whereas, in her early days, Lady Byron was peculiarly characterised by
+truthfulness, she has in her recent dealings with him acted the part of a
+liar,--that she is not only a liar, but that she lies for cruel means and
+malignant purposes,--that she is a moral assassin, and her treatment of
+her husband has been like that of the most detestable murderess and
+adulteress of ancient history, that she has learned to lie skilfully and
+artfully, that she equivocates, says incompatible things, and crosses her
+own tracks,--that she is double-faced, and has the art to lie even by
+silence, and that she has become wholly unscrupulous, and acquiesces in
+_any_thing, no matter what, that tends to the desired end, and that end
+the destruction of her husband.  This is a brief summary of the story
+that Byron made it his life's business to spread through society, to
+propagate and make converts to during his life, and which has been in
+substance reasserted by 'Blackwood' in a recent article this year.
+
+Now, the reader will please to notice that this poem is dated in
+September 1816, and that on the 29th of March of that same year, he had
+thought proper to tell quite another story.  At that time the deed of
+separation was not signed, and negotiations between Lady Byron, acting by
+legal counsel, and himself were still pending.  At that time, therefore,
+he was standing in a community who knew all he had said in former days of
+his wife's character, who were in an aroused and excited state by the
+fact that so lovely and good and patient a woman had actually been forced
+for some unexplained cause to leave him.  His policy at that time was to
+make large general confessions of sin, and to praise and compliment her,
+with a view of enlisting sympathy.  Everybody feels for a handsome
+sinner, weeping on his knees, asking pardon for his offences against his
+wife in the public newspapers.
+
+The celebrated 'Fare thee well,' as we are told, was written on the 17th
+of March, and accidentally found its way into the newspapers at this time
+'through the imprudence of a friend whom he allowed to take a copy.'
+These 'imprudent friends' have all along been such a marvellous
+convenience to Lord Byron.
+
+But the question met him on all sides, What is the matter?  This wife you
+have declared the brightest, sweetest, most amiable of beings, and
+against whose behaviour as a wife you actually never had nor can have a
+complaint to make,--why is she _now_ all of a sudden so inflexibly set
+against you?
+
+This question required an answer, and he answered by writing another
+poem, which also _accidentally_ found its way into the public prints.  It
+is in his 'Domestic Pieces,' which the reader may refer to at the end of
+this volume, and is called 'A Sketch.'
+
+There was a most excellent, respectable, well-behaved Englishwoman, a
+Mrs. Clermont, {16} who had been Lady Byron's governess in her youth, and
+was still, in mature life, revered as her confidential friend.  It
+appears that this person had been with Lady Byron during a part of her
+married life, especially the bitter hours of her lonely child-bed, when a
+young wife so much needs a sympathetic friend.  This Mrs. Clermont was
+the person selected by Lord Byron at this time to be the scapegoat to
+bear away the difficulties of the case into the wilderness.
+
+We are informed in Moore's Life what a noble pride of rank Lord Byron
+possessed, and how when the headmaster of a school, against whom he had a
+pique, invited him to dinner, he declined, saying, 'To tell you the
+truth, Doctor, if you should come to Newstead, I shouldn't think of
+inviting _you_ to dine with _me_, and so I don't care to dine with you
+here.'  Different countries, it appears, have different standards as to
+good taste; Moore gives this as an amusing instance of a young lord's
+spirit.
+
+Accordingly, his first attack against this 'lady,' as we Americans should
+call her, consists in gross statements concerning her having been born
+poor and in an inferior rank.  He begins by stating that she was
+
+   'Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred,
+   Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;
+   Next--for some gracious service unexpressed
+   And from its wages only to be guessed--
+   Raised from the toilet to the table, where
+   Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.
+   With eye unmoved and forehead unabashed,
+   She dines from off the plate she lately washed:
+   Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,
+   The genial confidante and general spy,--
+   Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess,--
+   An _only infant's earliest governess_!
+   What had she made the pupil of her art
+   None knows; _but that high soul secured the heart,
+   And panted for the truth it could not hear
+   With longing soul and undeluded ear_!' {17}
+
+The poet here recognises as a singular trait in Lady Byron her peculiar
+love of truth,--a trait which must have struck everyone that had any
+knowledge of her through life.  He goes on now to give what he certainly
+knew to be the real character of Lady Byron:--
+
+   'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,
+   Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
+   _Deceit infect_ not, nor contagion soil,
+   Indulgence weaken, or example spoil,
+   Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
+   On humbler talent with a pitying frown,
+   Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
+   Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain.'
+
+We are now informed that Mrs. Clermont, whom he afterwards says in his
+letters was a spy of Lady Byron's mother, set herself to make mischief
+between them.  He says:--
+
+   'If early habits,--those strong links that bind
+    At times the loftiest to the meanest mind,
+    Have given her power too deeply to instil
+    The angry essence of her deadly will;
+    If like a snake she steal within your walls,
+    Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
+    If like a viper to the heart she wind,
+    And leaves the venom there she did not find,--
+    What marvel that this hag of hatred works
+    Eternal evil latent as she lurks.'
+
+The noble lord then proceeds to abuse this woman of inferior rank in the
+language of the upper circles.  He thus describes her person and manner:--
+
+   'Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
+    With all the kind mendacity of hints,
+    While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,
+    A thread of candour with a web of wiles;
+    A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,
+    To hide her bloodless heart's soul-harden'd scheming;
+    A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,
+    And without feeling mock at all who feel;
+    With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,--
+    A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone.
+    Mark how the channels of her yellow blood
+    Ooze to her skin and stagnate there to mud,
+    Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
+    Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,--
+    (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
+    Congenial colours in that soul or face,)
+    Look on her features! and behold her mind
+    As in a mirror of itself defined:
+    Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged
+    There is no trait which might not be enlarged.'
+
+The poem thus ends:--
+
+   'May the strong curse of crushed affections light
+   Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,
+   And make thee in thy leprosy of mind
+   As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
+   Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
+   Black--as thy will for others would create;
+   Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
+   And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
+   O, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
+   The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread
+   Then when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
+   Look on thy earthly victims--and despair!
+   Down to the dust! and as thou rott'st away,
+   Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
+   _But for the love I bore and still must bear_
+   To her thy malice from all ties would tear,
+   Thy name,--thy human name,--to every eye
+   The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,
+   Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers,
+   And festering in the infamy of years.'
+      March 16, 1816.
+
+Now, on the 29th of March 1816, this was Lord Byron's story.  He states
+that his wife had a truthfulness even from early girlhood that the most
+artful and unscrupulous governess could not pollute,--that she always
+_panted_ for truth,--that flattery could not fool nor baseness blind
+her,--that though she was a genius and master of science, she was yet
+gentle and tolerant, and one whom no envy could ruffle to retaliate pain.
+
+In September of the same year she is a monster of unscrupulous deceit and
+vindictive cruelty.  Now, what had happened in the five months between
+the dates of these poems to produce such a change of opinion?  Simply
+this:--
+
+1st.  The negotiation between him and his wife's lawyers had ended in his
+signing a deed of separation in preference to standing a suit for
+divorce.
+
+2nd.  Madame de Stael, moved by his tears of anguish and professions of
+repentance, had offered to negotiate with Lady Byron on his behalf, and
+had failed.
+
+The failure of this application is the only apology given by Moore and
+Murray for this poem, which gentle Thomas Moore admits was not in quite
+as generous a strain as the 'Fare thee well.'
+
+But Lord Byron knew perfectly well, when he suffered that application to
+be made, that Lady Byron had been entirely convinced that her marriage
+relations with him could never be renewed, and that duty both to man and
+God required her to separate from him.  The allowing the negotiation was,
+therefore, an artifice to place his wife before the public in the
+attitude of a hard-hearted, inflexible woman; her refusal was what he
+knew beforehand must inevitably be the result, and merely gave him
+capital in the sympathy of his friends, by which they should be brought
+to tolerate and accept the bitter accusations of this poem.
+
+We have recently heard it asserted that this last-named piece of poetry
+was the sudden offspring of a fit of ill-temper, and was never intended
+to be published at all.  There were certainly excellent reasons why his
+friends should have advised him not to publish it _at that time_.  But
+that it was read with sympathy by the circle of his intimate friends, and
+believed by them, is evident from the frequency with which allusions to
+it occur in his confidential letters to them. {21}
+
+About three months after, under date March 10, 1817, he writes to Moore:
+'I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in public
+imagination, more particularly since my moral ----- clove down my fame.'
+Again to Murray in 1819, three years after, he says: 'I never hear
+anything of Ada, the little Electra of Mycenae.'
+
+Electra was the daughter of Clytemnestra, in the Greek poem, who lived to
+condemn her wicked mother, and to call on her brother to avenge the
+father.  There was in this mention of Electra more than meets the ear.
+Many passages in Lord Byron's poetry show that he intended to make this
+daughter a future partisan against her mother, and explain the awful
+words he is stated in Lady Anne Barnard's diary to have used when first
+he looked on his little girl,--'What an instrument of torture I have
+gained in you!'
+
+In a letter to Lord Blessington, April 6, 1823, he says, speaking of Dr.
+Parr:-- {22a}
+
+   'He did me the honour once to be a patron of mine, though a great
+   friend of the _other branch of the house of Atreus_, and the Greek
+   teacher, I believe, of my _moral_ Clytemnestra.  I say _moral_ because
+   it is true, and is so useful to the virtuous, that it enables them to
+   do anything without the aid of an AEgistheus.'
+
+If Lord Byron wrote this poem merely in a momentary fit of spleen, why
+were there so many persons evidently quite familiar with his allusions to
+it? and why was it preserved in Murray's hands? and why published after
+his death?  That Byron was in the habit of reposing documents in the
+hands of Murray, to be used as occasion offered, is evident from a part
+of a note written by him to Murray respecting some verses so intrusted:
+'Pray let not these _versiculi_ go forth with my name except _to the
+initiated_.' {22b}
+
+Murray, in publishing this attack on his wife after Lord Byron's death,
+showed that he believed in it, and, so believing, deemed Lady Byron a
+woman whose widowed state deserved neither sympathy nor delicacy of
+treatment.  At a time when every sentiment in the heart of the most
+deeply wronged woman would forbid her appearing to justify herself from
+such cruel slander of a dead husband, an honest, kind-hearted, worthy
+Englishman actually thought it right and proper to give these lines to
+her eyes and the eyes of all the reading world.  Nothing can show more
+plainly what this poem was written for, and how thoroughly it did its
+work!  Considering Byron as a wronged man, Murray thought he was
+contributing his mite towards doing him justice.  His editor prefaced the
+whole set of 'Domestic Pieces' with the following statements:--
+
+   'They all refer to the unhappy separation, of which the precise causes
+   are still a mystery, and which he declared to the last were never
+   disclosed to himself.  He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments,
+   disordered health, and dislike to family restraints had aggravated his
+   naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses.  He suspected
+   that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord,--which Lady Byron
+   denies,--and that more was due to the malignant offices of a female
+   dependant, who is the subject of the bitterly satirical sketch.
+
+   *          *          *          *
+
+   'To these general statements can only be added the still vaguer
+   allegations of Lady Byron, that she conceived his conduct to be the
+   result of insanity,--that, the physician pronouncing him responsible
+   for his actions, she could submit to them no longer, and that Dr.
+   Lushington, her legal adviser, agreed that a reconciliation was
+   neither proper nor possible.  _No weight can be attached to the
+   opinions of an opposing counsel upon accusations made by one party
+   behind the back of the other, who urgently demanded and was
+   pertinaciously refused the least opportunity of denial or defence_.  He
+   rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but _consented when
+   threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons._' {23}
+
+Neither John Murray nor any of Byron's partisans seem to have pondered
+the admission in these last words.
+
+Here, as appears, was a woman, driven to the last despair, standing with
+her child in her arms, asking from English laws protection for herself
+and child against her husband.
+
+She had appealed to the first counsel in England, and was acting under
+their direction.
+
+Two of the greatest lawyers in England have pronounced that there has
+been such a cause of offence on his part that a return to him is neither
+proper nor possible, and that no alternative remains to her but
+separation or divorce.
+
+He asks her to state her charges against him.  She, making answer under
+advice of her counsel, says, 'That if he _insists_ on the specifications,
+he must receive them in open court in a suit for divorce.'
+
+What, now, ought to have been the conduct of any brave, honest man, who
+believed that his wife was taking advantage of her reputation for virtue
+to turn every one against him, who saw that she had turned on her side
+even the lawyer he sought to retain on his; {24} that she was an
+unscrupulous woman, who acquiesced in every and any thing to gain her
+ends, while he stood before the public, as he says, 'accused of every
+monstrous vice, by public rumour or private rancour'?  When she, under
+advice of her lawyers, made the alternative legal _separation_ or open
+investigation in court for divorce, what did he do?
+
+HE SIGNED THE ACT OF SEPARATION AND LEFT ENGLAND.
+
+Now, let any man who knows the legal mind of England,--let any lawyer who
+knows the character of Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington, ask whether
+_they_ were the men to take a case into court for a woman that had no
+_evidence_ but her own statements and impressions?  Were _they_ men to go
+to trial without proofs?  Did they not know that there were artful,
+hysterical women in the world, and would _they_, of all people, be the
+men to take a woman's story on her own side, and advise her in the last
+issue to bring it into open court, without legal proof of the strongest
+kind?  Now, as long as Sir Samuel Romilly lived, this statement of
+Byron's--that he was condemned unheard, and had no chance of knowing
+whereof he _was accused--never appeared in public_.
+
+It, however, was most actively circulated in _private_.  That Byron was
+in the habit of intrusting to different confidants articles of various
+kinds to be shown to different circles as they could bear them, we have
+already shown.  We have recently come upon another instance of this kind.
+In the late eagerness to exculpate Byron, a new document has turned up,
+of which Mr. Murray, it appears, had never heard when, after Byron's
+death, he published in the preface to his 'Domestic Pieces' the sentence:
+'_He rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but consented when
+threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons_.'  It appears that, up to
+1853, neither John Murray senior, nor the son who now fills his place,
+had taken any notice of this newly found document, which we are now
+informed was drawn up by Lord Byron in August 1817, while Mr. Hobhouse
+was staying with him at La Mira, near Venice, given to Mr. Matthew
+Gregory Lewis, _for circulation among friends in England_, found in Mr.
+Lewis's papers after his death, and _now_ in the possession of Mr.
+Murray.'  Here it is:--
+
+   'It has been intimated to me that the persons understood to be the
+   legal advisers of Lady Byron have declared "their lips to be sealed
+   up" on the cause of the separation between her and myself.  If their
+   lips are sealed up, they are not sealed up by me, and the greatest
+   favour _they_ can confer upon me will be to open them.  From the first
+   hour in which I was apprised of the intentions of the Noel family to
+   the last communication between Lady Byron and myself in the character
+   of wife and husband (a period of some months), I called repeatedly and
+   in vain for a statement of their or her charges, and it was chiefly in
+   consequence of Lady Byron's claiming (in a letter still existing) a
+   promise on my part to consent to a separation, if such was _really_
+   her wish, that I consented at all; this claim, and the exasperating
+   and inexpiable manner in which their object was pursued, which
+   rendered it next to an impossibility that two persons so divided could
+   ever be reunited, induced me reluctantly then, and repentantly still,
+   to sign the deed, which I shall be happy--most happy--to cancel, and
+   go before any tribunal which may discuss the business in the most
+   public manner.
+
+   'Mr. Hobhouse made this proposition on my part, viz. to abrogate all
+   prior intentions--and go into court--the very day before the
+   separation was signed, and it was declined by the other party, as also
+   the publication of the correspondence during the previous discussion.
+   Those propositions I beg here to repeat, and to call upon her and hers
+   to say their worst, pledging myself to meet their
+   allegations,--whatever they may be,--and only too happy to be informed
+   at last of their real nature.
+
+   'BYRON.'
+
+   'August 9, 1817.
+
+   'P.S.--I have been, and am now, utterly ignorant of what description
+   her allegations, charges, or whatever name they may have assumed, are;
+   and am as little aware for what purpose they have been kept
+   back,--unless it was to sanction the most infamous calumnies by
+   silence.
+
+   'BYRON.'
+
+   'La Mira, near Venice.'
+
+It appears the circulation of this document must have been _very
+private_, since Moore, not _over_-delicate towards Lady Byron, did not
+think fit to print it; since John Murray neglected it, and since it has
+come out at this late hour for the first time.
+
+If Lord Byron really desired Lady Byron and her legal counsel to
+understand the facts herein stated, and was willing at all hazards to
+bring on an open examination, why was this _privately_ circulated?  Why
+not issued as a card in the London papers?  Is it likely that Mr. Matthew
+Gregory Lewis, and a chosen band of friends acting as a committee,
+requested an audience with Lady Byron, Sir Samuel Romilly, and Dr.
+Lushington, and formally presented this cartel of defiance?
+
+We incline to think not.  We incline to think that this small serpent, in
+company with many others of like kind, crawled secretly and privately
+around, and when it found a good chance, bit an honest Briton, whose
+blood was thenceforth poisoned by an undetected falsehood.
+
+The reader now may turn to the letters that Mr. Moore has thought fit to
+give us of this stay at La Mira, beginning with Letter 286, dated July 1,
+1817, {28a} where he says: 'I have been working up my impressions into a
+_Fourth_ Canto of Childe Harold,' and also 'Mr. Lewis is in Venice.  I am
+going up to stay a week with him there.'
+
+Next, under date La Mira, Venice, July 10, {28b} he says, 'Monk Lewis is
+here; how pleasant!'
+
+Next, under date July 20, 1817, to Mr. Murray: 'I write to give you
+notice that I have _completed the fourth and ultimate canto of Childe
+Harold_. . . .  It is yet to be copied and polished, and the notes are to
+come.'
+
+Under date of La Mira, August 7, 1817, he records that the new canto is
+one hundred and thirty stanzas in length, and talks about the price for
+it.  He is now ready to launch it on the world; and, as now appears, on
+August 9, 1817, _two days after_, he wrote the document above cited, and
+put it into the hands of Mr. Lewis, as we are informed, 'for circulation
+among friends in England.'
+
+The reason of this may now be evident.  Having prepared a suitable number
+of those whom he calls in his notes to Murray 'the initiated,' by private
+documents and statements, he is now prepared to publish his accusations
+against his wife, and the story of his wrongs, in a great immortal poem,
+which shall have a band of initiated interpreters, shall be read through
+the civilised world, and stand to accuse her after his death.
+
+In the Fourth Canto of 'Childe Harold,' with all his own overwhelming
+power of language, he sets forth his cause as against the silent woman
+who all this time had been making no party, and telling no story, and
+whom the world would therefore conclude to be silent because she had no
+answer to make.  I remember well the time when this poetry, so resounding
+in its music, so mournful, so apparently generous, filled my heart with a
+vague anguish of sorrow for the sufferer, and of indignation at the cold
+insensibility that had maddened him.  Thousands have felt the power of
+this great poem, which stands, and must stand to all time, a monument of
+what sacred and solemn powers God gave to this wicked man, and how vilely
+he abused this power as a weapon to slay the innocent.
+
+It is among the ruins of ancient Rome that his voice breaks forth in
+solemn imprecation:--
+
+   'O Time, thou beautifier of the dead,
+   Adorner of the ruin, comforter,
+   And only healer when the heart hath bled!--
+   Time, the corrector when our judgments err,
+   The test of truth, love,--sole philosopher,
+   For all besides are sophists,--from thy shrift
+   That never loses, though it doth defer!--
+   Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
+   My hands and heart and eyes, and claim of thee a gift.
+
+   *          *          *          *
+
+   'If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
+   Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
+   Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
+   Which shall not whelm me, _let me not have worn
+   This iron in my soul in vain, shall_ THEY _not mourn_?
+   And thou who never yet of human wrong
+   Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis,
+   Here where the ancients paid their worship long,
+   Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
+   And round Orestes bid them howl and hiss
+   _For that unnatural retribution,--just
+   Had it but come from hands less near_,--in this
+   Thy former realm I call thee from the dust.
+   Dost thou not hear, my heart? awake thou shalt and must!
+   It is not that I may not have incurred
+   For my ancestral faults and mine, the wound
+   Wherewith I bleed withal, and had it been conferred
+   With a just weapon it had flowed unbound,
+   But now my blood shall not sink in the ground.
+
+   *          *          *          *
+
+   'But in this page a record will I seek;
+   Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
+   Though I be ashes,--a far hour shall wreak
+   The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
+   And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.
+   That curse shall be forgiveness.  Have I not,--
+   Hear me, my Mother Earth! behold it, Heaven,--
+   Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
+   Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
+   Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
+   Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away,
+   And only not to desperation driven,
+   Because not altogether of such clay
+   As rots into the soul of those whom I survey?
+
+   ----------
+
+   'From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy,
+   Have I not seen what human things could do,--
+   From the loud roar of foaming calumny,
+   To the small whispers of the paltry few,
+   And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
+   _The Janus glance of whose significant eye,
+   Learning to lie with silence, would seem true,
+   And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
+   Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy_?' {31}
+
+The reader will please notice that the lines in italics are almost, word
+for word, a repetition of the lines in italics in the former poem on his
+wife, where he speaks of a _significant eye_ that has _learned to lie in
+silence_, and were evidently meant to apply to Lady Byron and her small
+circle of confidential friends.
+
+Before this, in the Third Canto of 'Childe Harold,' he had claimed the
+sympathy of the world, as a loving father, deprived by a severe fate of
+the solace and society of his only child:--
+
+   'My daughter,--with this name my song began,--
+   My daughter,--with this name my song shall end,--
+   I see thee not and hear thee not, but none
+   Can be so wrapped in thee; thou art the friend
+   To whom the shadows of far years extend.
+
+   *          *          *          *
+
+   'To aid thy mind's developments, to watch
+   The dawn of little joys, to sit and see
+   Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch
+   Knowledge of objects,--wonders yet to thee,--
+   And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss;--
+   This it should seem was not reserved for me.
+   Yet this was in my nature,--as it is,
+   I know not what there is, yet something like to this.
+
+   ----------
+
+   '_Yet though dull hate as duty should be taught_,
+   I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
+   Should be shut out from thee as spell still fraught
+   With desolation and a broken claim,
+   Though the grave close between us,--'t were the same
+   I know that thou wilt love me, though to drain
+   My blood from out thy being were an aim
+   And an attainment,--all will be in vain.'
+
+To all these charges against her, sent all over the world in verses as
+eloquent as the English language is capable of, the wife replied nothing.
+
+   'Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife,
+   Her only answer was,--a blameless life.'
+
+She had a few friends, a very few, with whom she sought solace and
+sympathy.  One letter from her, written at this time, preserved by
+accident, is the only authentic record of how the matter stood with her.
+
+We regret to say that the publication of this document was not brought
+forth to clear Lady Byron's name from her husband's slanders, but to
+shield _him_ from the worst accusation against him, by showing that this
+crime was not included in the few private confidential revelations that
+friendship wrung from the young wife at this period.
+
+Lady Anne Barnard, authoress of 'Auld Robin Grey,' a friend whose age and
+experience made her a proper confidante, sent for the broken-hearted,
+perplexed wife, and offered her a woman's sympathy.
+
+To her Lady Byron wrote many letters, under seal of confidence, and Lady
+Anne says: 'I will give you a few paragraphs transcribed from one of Lady
+Byron's own letters to me.  It is sorrowful to think that in a very
+little time this young and amiable creature, wise, patient, and feeling,
+will have her character mistaken by every one who reads Byron's works.  To
+rescue her from this I preserved her letters, and when she afterwards
+expressed a fear that anything of her writing should ever fall into hands
+to injure him (I suppose she meant by publication), I safely assured her
+that it never should.  But here this letter shall be placed, a sacred
+record in her favour, unknown to herself.
+
+   'I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last Canto
+   of "Childe Harold" may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.
+
+   'It contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake, though
+   his object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could
+   thus be oppressed into eternal stupor.  I will hope, as you do, that
+   it survives for his ultimate good.
+
+   'It was the acuteness of his remorse, impenitent in its character,
+   which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to spare every
+   semblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might have said to
+   his conscience, "You have made me wretched."
+
+   'I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible.  He has wished to
+   be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to perplex
+   observers and _prevent them from tracing effects to their real causes_
+   through all the intricacies of his conduct.  I was, as I told you, at
+   one time the dupe of his acted insanity, and clung to the former
+   delusions in regard to the motives that concerned me personally, till
+   the whole system was laid bare.
+
+   'He is the absolute monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did
+   lives, for conquest, without more regard to their intrinsic value,
+   considering them only as ciphers, which must derive all their import
+   from the situation in which he places them, and the ends to which he
+   adapts them, with such consummate skill.
+
+   'Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to give a better
+   colour to his own character?  Because he is too good an actor to over-
+   act, or to assume a moral garb, which it would be easy to strip off.
+
+   'In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his
+   imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject
+   with which his own character and interests are not identified; but by
+   the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene or time,
+   _he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system impenetrable
+   except to a very few_; and his constant desire of creating a sensation
+   makes him not averse to be the object of wonder and curiosity, even
+   though accompanied _by some dark and vague suspicions_.
+
+   'Nothing has contributed more to the misunderstanding of his real
+   character than the lonely grandeur in which he shrouds it, and his
+   affectation of being above mankind, when he exists almost in their
+   voice.  The romance of his sentiments is another feature of this mask
+   of state.  I know no one more habitually destitute of that enthusiasm
+   he so beautifully expresses, and to which he can work up his fancy
+   chiefly by contagion.
+
+   '_I had heard he was the best of brothers, the most generous of
+   friends, and I thought such feelings only required to be warmed and
+   cherished into more diffusive benevolence.  Though these opinions are
+   eradicated, and could never return but with the decay of my memory_,
+   you will not wonder if there are still moments when the association of
+   feelings which arose from them soften and sadden my thoughts.
+
+   'But I have not thanked you, dearest Lady Anne, for your kindness in
+   regard to a principal object,--that of rectifying false impressions.  I
+   trust you understand my wishes, which never were to injure Lord Byron
+   in any way; for, _though he would not suffer me to remain his wife, he
+   cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and it was from
+   considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations by which my
+   own conduct might have been more fully justified_.
+
+   'It is not necessary to speak ill of his heart in general; it is
+   sufficient that to me it was hard and impenetrable that my own must
+   have been broken before his could have been touched.  I would rather
+   represent this as _my_ misfortune than as _his_ guilt; but, surely,
+   that misfortune is not to be made my crime!  Such are my feelings; you
+   will judge how to act.
+
+   'His allusions to me in "Childe Harold" are cruel and cold, but with
+   such a semblance as to make _me_ appear so, and to attract all
+   sympathy to himself.  It is said in this poem that hatred of him will
+   be taught as a lesson to his child.  I might appeal to all who have
+   ever heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart, to witness
+   that there has been no moment when I have remembered injury otherwise
+   than affectionately and sorrowfully.
+
+   'It is not my duty to give way to hopeless and wholly unrequited
+   affection; but, so long as I live, my chief struggle will probably be
+   not to remember him too kindly.  I do not seek the sympathy of the
+   world, but I wish to be known by those whose opinion is valuable and
+   whose kindness is dear to me.  Among such, my dear Lady Anne, you will
+   ever be remembered by your truly affectionate
+
+   'A. BYRON.'
+
+On this letter I observe Lord Lindsay remarks that it shows a noble but
+rather severe character, and a recent author has remarked that it seemed
+to be written rather in a 'cold spirit of criticism.'  It seems to strike
+these gentlemen as singular that Lady Byron did not enjoy the poem!  But
+there are two remarkable sentences in this letter which have escaped the
+critics hitherto.  Lord Byron, in this, the Third Canto of 'Childe
+Harold,' expresses in most affecting words an enthusiasm of love for his
+sister.  So long as he lived he was her faithful correspondent; he sent
+her his journals; and, dying, he left her and her children everything he
+had in the world.  This certainly seems like an affectionate brother; but
+in what words does Lady Byron speak of this affection?
+
+'I _had heard he was the best of brothers_, the most generous of friends.
+I thought these feelings only required to be warmed and cherished into
+more diffusive benevolence.  THESE OPINIONS ARE ERADICATED, AND COULD
+NEVER RETURN BUT WITH THE DECAY OF MEMORY.'  Let me ask those who give
+this letter as a proof that at this time no idea such as I have stated
+was in Lady Byron's mind, to account for these words.  Let them please
+answer these questions: Why had Lady Byron ceased to think him a good
+brother?  Why does she use so strong a word as that the opinion was
+eradicated, torn up by the roots, and could never grow again in her
+except by decay of memory?
+
+And yet this is a document Lord Lindsay vouches for as authentic, and
+which he brings forward _in defence_ of Lord Byron.
+
+Again she says, 'Though he _would not suffer me to remain his wife_, he
+cannot prevent me from continuing his friend.'  Do these words not say
+that in some past time, in some decided manner, Lord Byron had declared
+to her his rejection of her as a wife?  I shall yet have occasion to
+explain these words.
+
+Again she says, 'I silenced accusations by which my conduct might have
+been more fully justified.'
+
+The people in England who are so very busy in searching out evidence
+against my true story have searched out and given to the world an
+important confirmation of this assertion of Lady Byron's.
+
+It seems that the confidential waiting-maid who went with Lady Byron on
+her wedding journey has been sought out and interrogated, and, as appears
+by description, is a venerable, respectable old person, quite in
+possession of all her senses in general, and of that sixth sense of
+propriety in particular, which appears not to be a common virtue in our
+days.
+
+As her testimony is important, we insert it just here, with a description
+of her person in full.  The ardent investigators thus speak:--
+
+   'Having gained admission, we were shown into a small but neatly
+   furnished and scrupulously clean apartment, where sat the object of
+   our visit.  Mrs. Mimms is a venerable-looking old lady, of short
+   stature, slight and active appearance, with a singularly bright and
+   intelligent countenance.  Although midway between eighty and ninety
+   years of age, she is in full possession of her faculties, discourses
+   freely and cheerfully, hears apparently as well as ever she did, and
+   her sight is so good that, aided by a pair of spectacles, she reads
+   the Chronicle every day with ease.  Some idea of her competency to
+   contribute valuable evidence to the subject which now so much engages
+   public attention on three continents may be found from her own
+   narrative of her personal relations with Lady Byron.  Mrs. Mimms was
+   born in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and knew Lady Byron from
+   childhood.  During the long period of ten years she was Miss
+   Milbanke's lady's-maid, and in that capacity became the close
+   confidante of her mistress.  There were circumstances which rendered
+   their relationship peculiarly intimate.  Miss Milbanke had no sister
+   or female friend to whom she was bound by the ties of more than a
+   common affection; and her mother, whatever other excellent qualities
+   she may have possessed, was too high-spirited and too hasty in temper
+   to attract the sympathies of the young.  Some months before Miss
+   Milbanke was married to Lord Byron, Mrs. Mimms had quitted her service
+   on the occasion of her own marriage with Mr. Mimms; but she continued
+   to reside in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and remained on the most
+   friendly terms with her former mistress.  As the courtship proceeded,
+   Miss Milbanke concealed nothing from her faithful attendant; and when
+   the wedding-day was fixed, she begged Mrs. Mimms to return and fulfil
+   the duties of lady's-maid, at least during the honeymoon.  Mrs. Mimms
+   at the time was nursing her first child, and it was no small sacrifice
+   to quit her own home at such a moment, but she could not refuse her
+   old mistress's request.  Accordingly, she returned to Seaham Hall some
+   days before the wedding, was present at the ceremony, and then
+   preceded Lord and Lady Byron to Halnaby Hall, near Croft, in the North
+   Riding of Yorkshire, one of Sir Ralph Milbanke's seats, where the
+   newly married couple were to spend the honeymoon.  Mrs. Mimms remained
+   with Lord and Lady Byron during the three weeks they spent at Halnaby
+   Hall, and then accompanied them to Seaham, where they spent the next
+   six weeks.  It was during the latter period that she finally quitted
+   Lady Byron's service; but she remained in the most friendly
+   communication with her ladyship till the death of the latter, and for
+   some time was living in the neighbourhood of Lady Byron's residence in
+   Leicestershire, where she had frequent opportunities of seeing her
+   former mistress.  It may be added that Lady Byron was not unmindful of
+   the faithful services of her friend and attendant in the instructions
+   to her executors contained in her will.  Such was the position of Mrs.
+   Mimms towards Lady Byron; and we think no one will question that it
+   was of a nature to entitle all that Mrs. Mimms may say on the subject
+   of the relations of Lord and Lady Byron to the most respectful
+   consideration and credit.'
+
+Such is the chronicler's account of the faithful creature whom nothing
+but intense indignation and disgust at Mrs. Beecher Stowe would lead to
+speak on her mistress's affairs; but Mrs. Beecher Stowe feels none the
+less sincere respect for her, and is none the less obliged to her for
+having spoken.  Much of Mrs. Mimms's testimony will be referred to in
+another place; we only extract one passage, to show that while Lord Byron
+spent his time in setting afloat slanders against his wife, she spent
+hers in sealing the mouths of witnesses against him.
+
+Of the period of the honeymoon Mrs. Mimms says:--
+
+   'The happiness of Lady Byron, however, was of brief duration; even
+   during the short three weeks they spent at Halnaby, the irregularities
+   of Lord Byron occasioned her the greatest distress, and she even
+   contemplated returning to her father.  Mrs. Mimms was her constant
+   companion and confidante through this painful period, and she does not
+   believe that her ladyship concealed a thought from her.  _With
+   laudable reticence, the old lady absolutely refuses to disclose the
+   particulars of Lord Byron's misconduct at this time; she gave Lady
+   Byron a solemn promise not to do so_.
+
+      *         *          *          *
+
+   'So serious did Mrs. Mimms consider the conduct of Lord Byron, that
+   she recommended her mistress to confide all the circumstances to her
+   father, Sir Ralph Milbanke, a calm, kind, and most excellent parent,
+   and take his advice as to her future course.  At one time Mrs. Mimms
+   thinks Lady Byron had resolved to follow her counsel and impart her
+   wrongs to Sir Ralph; but on arriving at Seaham Hall her ladyship
+   strictly enjoined Mrs. Mimms to preserve absolute silence on the
+   subject--a course which she followed herself;--so that when, six weeks
+   later, she and Lord Byron left Seaham for London, not a word had
+   escaped her to disturb her parents' tranquillity as to their
+   daughter's domestic happiness.  As might be expected, Mrs. Mimms bears
+   the warmest testimony to the noble and lovable qualities of her
+   departed mistress.  She also declares that Lady Byron was by no means
+   of a cold temperament, but that the affectionate impulses of her
+   nature were checked by the unkind treatment she experienced from her
+   husband.'
+
+We have already shown that Lord Byron had been, ever since his
+separation, engaged in a systematic attempt to reverse the judgment of
+the world against himself, by making converts of all his friends to a
+most odious view of his wife's character, and inspiring them with the
+zeal of propagandists to spread these views through society.  We have
+seen how he prepared partisans to interpret the Fourth Canto of 'Childe
+Harold.'
+
+This plan of solemn and heroic accusation was the first public attack on
+his wife.  Next we see him commencing a scurrilous attempt to turn her to
+ridicule in the First Canto of 'Don Juan.'
+
+It is to our point now to show how carefully and cautiously this Don Juan
+campaign was planned.
+
+Vol. IV. p.138, we find Letter 325 to Mr. Murray:--
+
+      'Venice: January 25, 1819.
+
+   'You will do me the favour to _print privately, for private
+   distribution, fifty copies of "Don Juan."_  The list of the men to
+   whom I wish it presented I will send hereafter.'
+
+The poem, as will be remembered, begins with the meanest and foulest
+attack on his wife that ever ribald wrote, and puts it in close
+neighbourhood with scenes which every pure man or woman must feel to be
+the beastly utterances of a man who had lost all sense of decency.  Such
+a potion was too strong to be administered even in a time when great
+license was allowed, and men were not over-nice.  But Byron chooses fifty
+armour-bearers of that class of men who would find indecent ribaldry
+about a wife a good joke, and talk about the 'artistic merits' of things
+which we hope would make an honest boy blush.
+
+At this time he acknowledges that his vices had brought him to a state of
+great exhaustion, attended by such debility of the stomach that nothing
+remained on it; and adds, 'I was obliged to reform my way of life, which
+was conducting me from the yellow leaf to the ground with all deliberate
+speed.' {41}  But as his health is a little better he employs it in
+making the way to death and hell elegantly easy for other young men, by
+breaking down the remaining scruples of a society not over-scrupulous.
+
+Society revolted, however, and fought stoutly against the nauseous dose.
+His sister wrote to him that she heard such things said of it that _she_
+never would read it; and the outcry against it on the part of all women
+of his acquaintance was such that for a time he was quite overborne; and
+the Countess Guiccioli finally extorted a promise from him to cease
+writing it.  Nevertheless, there came a time when England accepted 'Don
+Juan,'--when Wilson, in the 'Noctes Ambrosianae,' praised it as a
+classic, and took every opportunity to reprobate Lady Byron's conduct.
+When first it appeared the 'Blackwood' came out with that indignant
+denunciation of which we have spoken, and to which Byron replied in the
+extracts we have already quoted.  He did something more than reply.  He
+marked out Wilson as one of the strongest literary men of the day, and
+set his 'initiated' with their documents to work upon him.
+
+One of these documents to which he requested Wilson's attention was the
+private autobiography, written expressly to give his own story of all the
+facts of the marriage and separation.
+
+In the indignant letter he writes Murray on the 'Blackwood' article, Vol.
+IV., Letter 350--under date December 10, 1819--he says:--
+
+   'I sent home for Moore, and for Moore only (who has my journal also),
+   my memoir written up to 1816, and I gave him leave to show it to whom
+   he pleased, but _not to publish_ on any account.  _You_ may read it,
+   and you may let Wilson read it if he likes--not for his public
+   opinion, but his private, for I like the man, and care very little
+   about the magazine.  And I could wish Lady Byron herself to read it,
+   that she may have it in her power to mark any thing mistaken or
+   misstated.  As it will never appear till after my extinction, it would
+   be but fair she should see it; that is to say, herself willing.  Your
+   "Blackwood" accuses me of treating women harshly; but I have been
+   their martyr; my whole life has been sacrificed to them and by them.'
+
+It was a part of Byron's policy to place Lady Byron in positions before
+the world where she _could_ not speak, and where her silence would be set
+down to her as haughty, stony indifference and obstinacy.  Such was the
+pretended negotiation through Madame de Stael, and such now this
+apparently fair and generous offer to let Lady Byron see and mark this
+manuscript.
+
+The little Ada is now in her fifth year--a child of singular sensibility
+and remarkable mental powers--one of those exceptional children who are
+so perilous a charge for a mother.
+
+Her husband proposes this artful snare to her,--that she shall mark what
+is false in a statement which is all built on a damning lie, that she
+cannot refute over that daughter's head,--and which would perhaps be her
+ruin to discuss.
+
+Hence came an addition of two more documents, to be used 'privately among
+friends,' {43} and which 'Blackwood' uses after Lady Byron is safely out
+of the world to cast ignominy on her grave--the wife's letter, that of a
+mother standing at bay for her daughter, knowing that she is dealing with
+a desperate, powerful, unscrupulous enemy.
+
+      'Kirkby Mallory: March 10, 1820.
+
+   'I received your letter of January 1, offering to my perusal a Memoir
+   of part of your life.  I decline to inspect it.  I consider the
+   publication or circulation of such a composition at any time as
+   prejudicial to Ada's future happiness.  For my own sake, I have no
+   reason to shrink from publication; but, notwithstanding the injuries
+   which I have suffered, I should lament some of the consequences.
+
+      'A. Byron.
+
+   'To Lord Byron.'
+
+Lord Byron, writing for the public, as is his custom, makes reply:--
+
+      'Ravenna: April 3, 1820.
+
+   'I received yesterday your answer, dated March 10.  My offer was an
+   honest one, and surely could only be construed as such even by the
+   most malignant casuistry.  I could answer you, but it is too late, and
+   it is not worth while.  To the mysterious menace of the last sentence,
+   whatever its import may be--and I cannot pretend to unriddle it--I
+   could hardly be very sensible even if I understood it, as, before it
+   can take place, I shall be where "nothing can touch him further." . .
+   .  I advise you, however, to anticipate the period of your intention,
+   for, be assured, no power of figures can avail beyond the present; and
+   if it could, I would answer with the Florentine:--
+
+   '"Ed io, che posto son con loro in croce
+   .     .     .     .     .     e certo
+   La fiera moglie, piu ch'altro, mi nuoce." {44}
+
+      'BYRON.
+
+   'To Lady Byron.'
+
+Two things are very evident in this correspondence: Lady Byron intimates
+that, if he publishes his story, some _consequences_ must follow which
+she shall regret.
+
+Lord Byron receives this as a threat, and says he doesn't understand it.
+But directly after he says, 'Before IT can take place, I shall be,' etc.
+
+The intimation is quite clear.  He _does_ understand what the
+consequences alluded to are.  They are evidently that Lady Byron will
+speak out and tell her story.  He says she cannot do this till _after he
+is dead_, and then he shall not care.  In allusion to her accuracy as to
+dates and figures, he says: 'Be assured no power of figures can avail
+beyond the present' (life); and then ironically _advises_ her to
+_anticipate the period_,--i.e. to speak out while he is alive.
+
+In Vol. VI. Letter 518, which Lord Byron wrote to Lady Byron, but did not
+send, he says: 'I burned your last note for two reasons,--firstly,
+because it was written in a style not very agreeable; and, secondly,
+because I wished to take your word without documents, which are the
+resources of worldly and suspicious people.'
+
+It would appear from this that there was a last letter of Lady Byron to
+her husband, which he did not think proper to keep on hand, or show to
+the 'initiated' with his usual unreserve; that this letter contained some
+kind of _pledge_ for which he preferred to take her word, _without
+documents_.
+
+Each reader can imagine for himself what that _pledge_ might have been;
+but from the tenor of the three letters we should infer that it was a
+promise of silence for his lifetime, on _certain conditions_, and that
+the publication of the autobiography would violate those conditions, and
+make it her duty to speak out.
+
+This celebrated autobiography forms so conspicuous a figure in the whole
+history, that the reader must have a full idea of it, as given by Byron
+himself, in Vol. IV.  Letter 344, to Murray:--
+
+   'I gave to Moore, who is gone to Rome, my life in MS.,--in seventy-
+   eight folio sheets, brought down to 1816 . . . also a journal kept in
+   1814.  Neither are for publication during my life, but when I am cold
+   you may do what you please.  In the mean time, if you like to read
+   them you may, and show them to anybody you like.  I care not. . . . '
+
+He tells him also:--
+
+   'You will find in it a detailed account of my marriage and its
+   consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such an account.'
+
+Of the extent to which this autobiography was circulated we have the
+following testimony of Shelton Mackenzie, in notes to 'The Noctes' of
+June 1824.
+
+In 'The Noctes' Odoherty says:--
+
+   'The fact is, the work had been copied for the private reading of a
+   great lady in Florence.'
+
+The note says:--
+
+   'The great lady in Florence, for whose private reading Byron's
+   autobiography was copied, was the Countess of Westmoreland. . . .  Lady
+   Blessington had the autobiography in her possession for weeks, and
+   confessed to having copied every line of it.  Moore remonstrated, and
+   she committed her copy to the flames, but did not tell him that her
+   sister, Mrs. Home Purvis, now Viscountess of Canterbury, had also made
+   a copy! . . .  From the quantity of copy I have seen,--and others were
+   more in the way of falling in with it than myself,--I surmise that at
+   least half a dozen copies were made, and of these _five_ are now in
+   existence.  Some particular parts, such as the marriage and
+   separation, were copied separately; but I think there cannot be less
+   than five full copies yet to be found.'
+
+This was written _after the original autobiography was burned_.
+
+We may see the zeal and enthusiasm of the Byron party,--copying seventy-
+eight folio sheets, as of old Christians copied the Gospels.  How widely,
+fully, and thoroughly, thus, by this secret process, was society
+saturated with Byron's own versions of the story that related to himself
+and wife!  Against her there was only the complaint of an absolute
+silence.  She put forth no statements, no documents; had no party, sealed
+the lips of her counsel, and even of her servants; yet she could not but
+have known, from time to time, how thoroughly and strongly this web of
+mingled truth and lies was being meshed around her steps.
+
+From the time that Byron first saw the importance of securing Wilson on
+his side, and wrote to have his partisans attend to him, we may date an
+entire revolution in the 'Blackwood.'  It became Byron's warmest
+supporter,--is to this day the bitterest accuser of his wife.
+
+Why was this wonderful silence?  It appears by Dr. Lushington's
+statements, that, when Lady Byron did speak, she had a story to tell that
+powerfully affected both him and Romilly,--a story supported by evidence
+on which they were willing to have gone to public trial.  Supposing, now,
+she had imitated Lord Byron's example, and, avoiding public trial, had
+put her story into private circulation; as he sent 'Don Juan' to fifty
+confidential friends, suppose she had sent a written statement of her
+story to fifty judges as intelligent as the two that had heard it; or
+suppose she had confronted his autobiography with her own,--what would
+have been the result?
+
+The first result might have been Mrs. Leigh's utter ruin.  The world may
+finally forgive the man of genius anything; but for a woman there is no
+mercy and no redemption.
+
+This ruin Lady Byron prevented by her utter silence and great
+self-command.  Mrs. Leigh never lost position.  Lady Byron never so
+varied in her manner towards her as to excite the suspicions even of her
+confidential old servant.
+
+To protect Mrs. Leigh effectually, it must have been necessary to
+continue to exclude even her own mother from the secret, as we are
+assured she did at first; for, had she told Lady Milbanke, it is not
+possible that so high-spirited a woman could have restrained herself from
+such outward expressions as would at least have awakened suspicion.  There
+was no resource but this absolute silence.
+
+Lady Blessington, in her last conversation with Lord Byron, thus
+describes the life Lady Byron was leading.  She speaks of her as 'wearing
+away her youth in almost monastic seclusion, questioned by some,
+appreciated by few, seeking consolation alone in the discharge of her
+duties, and avoiding all external demonstrations of a grief that her pale
+cheek and solitary existence alone were vouchers for.' {49}
+
+The main object of all this silence may be imagined, if we remember that
+if Lord Byron had not died,--had he truly and deeply repented, and become
+a thoroughly good man, and returned to England to pursue a course worthy
+of his powers, there was on record neither word nor deed from his wife to
+stand in his way.
+
+HIS PLACE WAS KEPT IN SOCIETY, ready for him to return to whenever he
+came clothed and in his right mind.  He might have had the heart and
+confidence of his daughter unshadowed by a suspicion.  He might have won
+the reverence of the great and good in his own lands and all lands.  That
+hope, which was the strong support, the prayer of the silent wife, it did
+not please God to fulfil.
+
+Lord Byron died a worn-out man at thirty-six.  But the bitter seeds he
+had sown came up, after his death, in a harvest of thorns over his grave;
+and there were not wanting hands to use them as instruments of torture on
+the heart of his widow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.  RESUME OF THE CONSPIRACY.
+
+
+We have traced the conspiracy of Lord Byron against his wife up to its
+latest device.  That the reader's mind may be clear on the points of the
+process, we shall now briefly recapitulate the documents in the order of
+time.
+
+I.  March 17, 1816.--While negotiations for separation were
+pending,--'_Fare thee well, and if for ever_.'
+
+While writing these pages, we have received from England the testimony of
+one who has seen the original draught of that 'Fare thee well.'  This
+original copy had evidently been subjected to the most careful and acute
+revision.  Scarcely two lines that were not interlined, scarcely an
+adjective that was not exchanged for a better; showing that the noble
+lord was not so far overcome by grief as to have forgotten his
+reputation.  (Found its way to the public prints through the imprudence
+of _a friend_.)
+
+II.  March 29, 1816.--An attack on Lady Byron's old governess for having
+been born poor, for being homely, and for having unduly influenced his
+wife against him; promising that her grave should be a fiery bed, etc.;
+also praising his wife's perfect and remarkable truthfulness and
+discernment, that made it impossible for flattery to fool, or baseness
+blind her; but ascribing all his woes to her being fooled and blinded by
+this same governess.  (Found its way to the prints by the imprudence of
+_a friend_.)
+
+III.  September 1816.--Lines on hearing that Lady Byron is ill.  Calls
+her a Clytemnestra, who has secretly set assassins on her lord; says she
+is a mean, treacherous, deceitful liar, and has entirely departed from
+her early truth, and become the most unscrupulous and unprincipled of
+women.  (Never printed till after Lord Byron's death, but circulated
+_privately_ among the '_initiated_.')
+
+IV.  Aug. 9, 1817.--Gives to M. G. Lewis a paper for circulation among
+friends in England, stating that what he most wants is _public
+investigation_, which has always been denied him; and daring Lady Byron
+and her counsel to come out publicly.  (Found in M. G. Lewis's portfolio
+after his death; never heard of before, except among the 'initiated.')
+
+Having given M. G. Lewis's document time to work,--
+
+January 1818.--Gives the Fourth Canto of 'Childe Harold' {51} to the
+public.
+
+Jan. 25, 1819.--Sends to Murray to print for private circulation among
+the 'initiated' the First Canto of 'Don Juan.'
+
+Is nobly and severely rebuked for this insult to his wife by the
+'Blackwood,' August 1819.
+
+October 1819.--Gives Moore the manuscript 'Autobiography,' with leave to
+show it to whom he pleases, and print it after his death.
+
+Oct. 29, 1819, Vol. IV. Letter 344.--Writes to Murray, that he may read
+all this 'Autobiography,' and show it to anybody he likes.
+
+Dec. 10, 1819.--Writes to Murray on this article in 'Blackwood' against
+'Don Juan' and himself, which he supposes written by Wilson; sends a
+complimentary message to Wilson, and asks him to read his 'Autobiography'
+sent by Moore.  (Letter 350.)
+
+March 15, 1820.--Writes and dedicates to I. Disraeli, Esq., a vindication
+of himself in reply to the 'Blackwood' on 'Don Juan,' containing an
+indignant defence of his own conduct in relation to his wife, and
+maintaining that he never yet has had an opportunity of knowing whereof
+he has been accused; accusing Sir S. Romilly of taking his retainer, and
+then going over to the adverse party, etc.  (Printed for _private
+circulation_; to be found in the standard English edition of Murray, vol.
+ix. p.57.)
+
+To this condensed account of Byron's strategy we must add the crowning
+stroke of policy which transmitted this warfare to his friends, to be
+continued after his death.
+
+During the last visit Moore made him in Italy, and just before Byron
+presented to him his 'Autobiography,' the following scene occurred, as
+narrated by Moore (vol. iv. p.221):--
+
+   'The chief subject of conversation, when alone, was his marriage, and
+   the load of obloquy which it had brought upon him.  He was most
+   anxious to know _the worst_ that had been alleged of his conduct; and,
+   as this was our first opportunity of speaking together on the subject,
+   I did not hesitate to put his candour most searchingly to the proof,
+   not only by enumerating the various charges I had heard brought
+   against him by others, but by specifying such portions of these
+   charges as I had been inclined to think not incredible myself.
+
+   'To all this he listened with patience, and answered with the most
+   unhesitating frankness; laughing to scorn the tales of unmanly outrage
+   related of him, but at the same time acknowledging that there had been
+   in his conduct but too much to blame and regret, and stating one or
+   two occasions during his domestic life when he had been irritated into
+   letting the "breath of bitter words" escape him,. . .  which he now
+   evidently remembered with a degree of remorse and pain which might
+   well have entitled them to be forgotten by others.
+
+   'It was, at the same time, manifest, that, whatever admissions he
+   might be inclined to make respecting his own delinquencies, the
+   inordinate measure of the punishment dealt out to him had sunk deeply
+   into his mind, and, with the usual effect of such injustice, drove him
+   also to be unjust himself; so much so, indeed, as to impute to the
+   quarter to which he now traced all his ill fate a feeling of fixed
+   hostility to himself, which would not rest, he thought, even at his
+   grave, but continue to persecute his memory as it was now embittering
+   his life.  So strong was this impression upon him, that, during one of
+   our few intervals of seriousness, he conjured me by our friendship,
+   if, as he both felt and hoped, I should survive him, not to let
+   unmerited censure settle upon his name.'
+
+In this same account, page 218, Moore testifies that
+
+   'Lord Byron disliked his countrymen, but only because he knew that his
+   morals were held in contempt by them.  The English, themselves rigid
+   observers of family duties, could not pardon him the neglect of his,
+   nor his trampling on principles; therefore, neither did he like being
+   presented to them, nor did they, especially when they had wives with
+   them, like to cultivate his acquaintance.  Still there was a strong
+   desire in all of them to see him; and the women in particular, who did
+   not dare to look at him but by stealth, said in an under-voice, "What
+   a pity it is!"  If, however, any of his compatriots of exalted rank
+   and high reputation came forward to treat him with courtesy, he showed
+   himself obviously flattered by it.  It seemed that, to the wound which
+   remained open in his ulcerated heart, such soothing attentions were as
+   drops of healing balm, which comforted him.'
+
+When in society, we are further informed by a lady quoted by Mr. Moore,
+he was in the habit of speaking of his wife with much respect and
+affection, as an illustrious lady, distinguished for her qualities of
+heart and understanding; saying that all the fault of their cruel
+separation lay with himself.  Mr. Moore seems at times to be somewhat
+puzzled by these contradictory statements of his idol, and speculates not
+a little on what could be Lord Byron's object in using such language in
+public; mentally comparing it, we suppose, with the free handling which
+he gave to the same subject in his private correspondence.
+
+The innocence with which Moore gives himself up to be manipulated by Lord
+Byron, the naivete with which he shows all the process, let us a little
+into the secret of the marvellous powers of charming and blinding which
+this great actor possessed.
+
+Lord Byron had the beauty, the wit, the genius, the dramatic talent,
+which have constituted the strength of some wonderfully fascinating
+women.
+
+There have been women able to lead their leashes of blinded adorers; to
+make them swear that black was white, or white black, at their word; to
+smile away their senses, or weep away their reason.  No matter what these
+sirens may say, no matter what they may do, though caught in a thousand
+transparent lies, and doing a thousand deeds which would have ruined
+others, still men madly rave after them in life, and tear their hair over
+their graves.  Such an enchanter in man's shape was Lord Byron.
+
+He led captive Moore and Murray by being beautiful, a genius, and a lord;
+calling them 'Dear Tom' and 'Dear Murray,' while they were only
+commoners.  He first insulted Sir Walter Scott, and then witched his
+heart out of him by ingenuous confessions and poetical compliments; he
+took Wilson's heart by flattering messages and a beautifully-written
+letter; he corresponded familiarly with Hogg; and, before his death, had
+made fast friends, in one way or another, of the whole 'Noctes
+Ambrosianae' Club.
+
+We thus have given the historical resume of Lord Byron's attacks on his
+wife's reputation: we shall add, that they were based on philosophic
+principles, showing a deep knowledge of mankind.  An analysis will show
+that they can be philosophically classified:--
+
+1st.  Those which addressed the sympathetic nature of man, representing
+her as cold, methodical, severe, strict, unforgiving.
+
+2nd.  Those addressed to the faculty of association, connecting her with
+ludicrous and licentious images; taking from her the usual protection of
+womanly delicacy and sacredness.
+
+3rd.  Those addressed to the moral faculties, accusing her as artful,
+treacherous, untruthful, malignant.
+
+All these various devices he held in his hand, shuffling and dealing them
+as a careful gamester his pack of cards according to the exigencies of
+the game.  He played adroitly, skilfully, with blinding flatteries and
+seductive wiles, that made his victims willing dupes.
+
+Nothing can more clearly show the power and perfectness of his
+enchantments than the masterly way in which he turned back the moral
+force of the whole English nation, which had risen at first in its
+strength against him.  The victory was complete.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.  RESULTS AFTER LORD BYRON'S DEATH.
+
+
+At the time of Lord Byron's death, the English public had been so
+skilfully manipulated by the Byron propaganda, that the sympathy of the
+whole world was with him.  A tide of emotion was now aroused in England
+by his early death--dying in the cause of Greece and liberty.  There
+arose a general wail for him, as for a lost pleiad, not only in England,
+but over the whole world; a great rush of enthusiasm for his memory, to
+which the greatest literary men of England freely gave voice.  By general
+consent, Lady Byron seems to have been looked upon as the only
+cold-hearted unsympathetic person in this general mourning.
+
+From that time the literary world of England apparently regarded Lady
+Byron as a woman to whom none of the decorums, nor courtesies of ordinary
+womanhood, nor even the consideration belonging to common humanity, were
+due.
+
+'She that is a widow indeed, and desolate,' has been regarded in all
+Christian countries as an object made sacred by the touch of God's
+afflicting hand, sacred in her very helplessness; and the old Hebrew
+Scriptures give to the Supreme Father no dearer title than 'the widow's
+God.'  But, on Lord Byron's death, men not devoid of tenderness, men
+otherwise generous and of fine feeling, acquiesced in insults to his
+widow with an obtuseness that seems, on review, quite incredible.
+
+Lady Byron was not only a widow, but an orphan.  She had no sister for
+confidante; no father and mother to whom to go in her sorrows--sorrows so
+much deeper and darker to her than they could be to any other human
+being.  She had neither son nor brother to uphold and protect her.  On
+all hands it was acknowledged that, so far, there was no fault to be
+found in her but her utter silence.  Her life was confessed to be pure,
+useful, charitable; and yet, in this time of her sorrow, the writers of
+England issued article upon article not only devoid of delicacy, but
+apparently injurious and insulting towards her, with a blind
+unconsciousness which seems astonishing.
+
+One of the greatest literary powers of that time was the 'Blackwood:' the
+reigning monarch on that literary throne was Wilson, the lion-hearted,
+the brave, generous, tender poet, and, with some sad exceptions, the
+noble man.  But Wilson had believed the story of Byron, and, by his very
+generosity and tenderness and pity, was betrayed into injustice.
+
+In 'The Noctes' of November 1824 there is a conversation of the Noctes
+Club, in which North says, 'Byron and I knew each other pretty well; and
+I suppose there's no harm in adding, that we appreciated each other
+pretty tolerably.  Did you ever see his letter to me?'
+
+The footnote to this says, '_This letter, which was_ PRINTED _in Byron's
+lifetime, was not published till_ 1830, when it appeared in Moore's "Life
+of Byron."  It is one of the most vigorous prose compositions in the
+language.  Byron had the highest opinion of Wilson's genius and noble
+spirit.'
+
+In the first place, with our present ideas of propriety and good taste,
+we should reckon it an indecorum to make the private affairs of a pure
+and good woman, whose circumstances under any point of view were trying,
+and who evidently shunned publicity, the subject of public discussion in
+magazines which were read all over the world.
+
+Lady Byron, as they all knew, had on her hands a most delicate and
+onerous task, in bringing up an only daughter, necessarily inheriting
+peculiarities of genius and great sensitiveness; and the many
+mortifications and embarrassments which such intermeddling with her
+private matters must have given, certainly should have been considered by
+men with any pretensions to refinement or good feeling.
+
+But the literati of England allowed her no consideration, no rest, no
+privacy.
+
+In 'The Noctes' of November 1825 there is the record of a free
+conversation upon Lord and Lady Byron's affairs, interlarded with
+exhortations to push the bottle, and remarks on whisky-toddy.  Medwin's
+'Conversations with Lord Byron' is discussed, which, we are told in a
+note, appeared a few months after the _noble_ poet's death.
+
+There is a rather bold and free discussion of Lord Byron's character--his
+fondness for gin and water, on which stimulus he wrote 'Don Juan;' and
+James Hogg says pleasantly to Mullion, 'O Mullion! it's a pity you and
+Byron could na ha' been acquaint.  There would ha' been brave sparring to
+see who could say the wildest and the dreadfullest things; for he had
+neither fear of man or woman, and would ha' his joke or jeer, cost what
+it might.'  And then follows a specimen of one of his jokes with an
+actress, that, in indecency, certainly justifies the assertion.  From the
+other stories which follow, and the parenthesis that occurs frequently
+('Mind your glass, James, a little more!'), it seems evident that the
+party are progressing in their peculiar kind of _civilisation_.
+
+It is in this same circle and paper that Lady Byron's private affairs
+come up for discussion.  The discussion is thus elegantly introduced:--
+
+   Hogg.--'Reach me the black bottle.  I say, Christopher, what, after
+   all, is your opinion o' Lord and Leddy Byron's quarrel?  Do you
+   yoursel' take part with him, or with her?  I wad like to hear your
+   real opinion.'
+
+   North.--'Oh, dear!  Well, Hogg, since you will have it, I think
+   Douglas Kinnard and Hobhouse are bound to tell us whether there be any
+   truth, and how much, in this story about the _declaration_, signed by
+   Sir Ralph' [Milbanke].
+
+The note here tells us that this refers to a statement that appeared in
+'Blackwood' immediately after Byron's death, to the effect that, previous
+to the formal separation from his wife, Byron required and obtained from
+Sir Ralph Milbanke, Lady Byron's father, a statement to the effect that
+Lady Byron had no charge of moral delinquency to bring against him. {61}
+
+North continues:--
+
+   'And I think Lady Byron's letter--the "Dearest Duck" one I mean--should
+   really be forthcoming, if her ladyship's friends wish to stand fair
+   before the public.  At present we have nothing but loose talk of
+   society to go upon; and certainly, _if the things that are said be
+   true, there must be thorough explanation from some quarter, or the
+   tide will continue, as it has assuredly begun, to flow in a direction
+   very opposite to what we were for years accustomed_.  Sir, they must
+   _explain this business of the letter_.  You have, of course, heard
+   about the invitation it contained, the warm, affectionate invitation,
+   to Kirkby Mallory'--
+
+Hogg interposes,--
+
+   'I dinna like to be interruptin' ye, Mr. North; but I must inquire, Is
+   the _jug_ to stand still while ye're going on at that rate?'
+
+   North--'There, Porker!  These things are part and parcel of the
+   chatter of every bookseller's shop; a fortiori, of every drawing-room
+   in May Fair.  Can the matter stop here?  Can a great man's memory be
+   permitted to incur damnation while these saving clauses are afloat
+   anywhere uncontradicted?'
+
+And from this the conversation branches off into strong, emphatic praise
+of Byron's conduct in Greece during the last part of his life.
+
+The silent widow is thus delicately and considerately reminded in the
+'Blackwood' that she is the talk, not only over the whisky jug of the
+Noctes, but in every drawing-room in London; and that she must speak out
+and explain matters, or the whole world will set against her.
+
+But she does not speak yet.  The public persecution, therefore, proceeds.
+Medwin's book being insufficient, another biographer is to be selected.
+Now, the person in the Noctes Club who was held to have the most complete
+information of the Byron affairs, and was, on that account, first thought
+of by Murray to execute this very delicate task of writing a memoir which
+should include the most sacred domestic affairs of a noble lady and her
+orphan daughter, was Maginn.  Maginn, the author of the pleasant joke,
+that 'man never reaches the apex of civilisation till he is too drunk to
+pronounce the word,' was the first person in whose hands the
+'Autobiography,' Memoirs, and Journals of Lord Byron were placed with
+this view.
+
+The following note from Shelton Mackenzie, in the June number of 'The
+Noctes,' 1824, says,--
+
+   'At that time, had he been so minded, Maginn (Odoherty) could have got
+   up a popular Life of Byron as well as most men in England.  Immediately
+   on the account of Byron's death being received in London, John Murray
+   proposed that Maginn should bring out Memoirs, Journals, and Letters
+   of Lord Byron, and, with this intent, placed in his hand every line
+   that he (Murray) possessed in Byron's handwriting. . . . .  The strong
+   desire of Byron's family and executors that the "Autobiography" should
+   be burned, to which desire Murray foolishly yielded, made such an
+   hiatus in the materials, that Murray and Maginn agreed it would not
+   answer to bring out the work then.  Eventually Moore executed it.'
+
+The character of the times in which this work was to be undertaken will
+appear from the following note of Mackenzie's to 'The Noctes' of August
+1824, which we copy, with the author's own Italics:--
+
+   'In the "Blackwood" of July 1824 was a poetical epistle by the
+   renowned Timothy Tickler to the editor of the "John Bull" magazine, on
+   an article in his first number.  This article. . .  professed to be a
+   portion of the veritable "Autobiography" of Byron which was burned,
+   and was called "My Wedding Night."  It appeared to relate in detail
+   everything that occurred in the twenty-four hours immediately
+   succeeding that in which Byron was married.  It had plenty of
+   coarseness, and some to spare.  It went into particulars such as
+   hitherto had been given only by Faublas; and it had, notwithstanding,
+   many phrases and some facts which evidently did not belong to a mere
+   fabricator.  Some years after, I compared this "Wedding Night" with
+   what I had all assurance of having been transcribed from the actual
+   manuscripts of Byron, and was persuaded that the magazine-writer must
+   have had the actual statement before him, or have had a perusal of it.
+   The writer in "Blackwood" declared his conviction that it really was
+   Byron's own writing.'
+
+The reader must remember that Lord Byron died April 1824; so that,
+according to this, his 'Autobiography' was made the means of this gross
+insult to his widow three months after his death.
+
+If some powerful cause had not paralysed all feelings of gentlemanly
+honour, and of womanly delicacy, and of common humanity, towards Lady
+Byron, throughout the whole British nation, no editor would have dared to
+open a periodical with such an article; or, if he had, he would have been
+overwhelmed with a storm of popular indignation, which, like the fire
+upon Sodom, would have made a pillar of salt of him for a warning to all
+future generations.
+
+'Blackwood' reproves the 'John Bull' in a poetical epistle, recognising
+the article as coming from Byron, and says to the author,--
+
+   'But that you, sir, a wit and a scholar like you,
+   Should not blush to produce what he blushed not to do,--
+   Take your compliment, youngster; this doubles, almost,
+   The sorrow that rose when his honour was lost.'
+
+We may not wonder that the 'Autobiography' was burned, as Murray says in
+a recent account, by a committee of Byron's friends, including Hobhouse,
+his sister, and Murray himself.
+
+Now, the 'Blackwood' of July 1824 thus declares its conviction that this
+outrage on every sentiment of human decency came from Lord Byron, and
+that his honour was lost.  Maginn does not undertake the memoir.  No
+memoir at all is undertaken; till finally Moore is selected, as, like
+Demetrius of old, a well-skilled gilder and 'maker of silver shrines,'
+though not for Diana.  To Moore is committed the task of doing his best
+for this battered image, in which even the worshippers recognise foul
+sulphurous cracks, but which they none the less stand ready to worship as
+a genuine article that 'fell down from Jupiter.'
+
+Moore was a man of no particular nicety as to moralities, but in that
+matter seems not very much below what this record shows his average
+associates to be.  He is so far superior to Maginn, that his vice is rose-
+coloured and refined.  He does not burst out with such heroic stanzas as
+Maginn's frank invitation to Jeremy Bentham:--
+
+   'Jeremy, throw your pen aside,
+      And come get drunk with me;
+   And we'll go where Bacchus sits astride,
+      Perched high on barrels three.'
+
+Moore's vice is cautious, soft, seductive, slippery, and covered at times
+with a thin, tremulous veil of religious sentimentalism.
+
+In regard to Byron, he was an unscrupulous, committed partisan: he was as
+much bewitched by him as ever man has been by woman; and therefore to
+him, at last, the task of editing Byron's 'Memoirs' was given.
+
+This Byron, whom they all knew to be obscene beyond what even their most
+drunken tolerance could at first endure; this man, whose foul license
+spoke out what most men conceal from mere respect to the decent instincts
+of humanity; whose 'honour was lost,'--was submitted to this careful
+manipulator, to be turned out a perfected idol for a world longing for an
+idol, as the Israelites longed for the calf in Horeb.
+
+The image was to be invested with deceitful glories and shifting
+haloes,--admitted faults spoken of as peculiarities of sacred origin,--and
+the world given to understand that no common rule or measure could apply
+to such an undoubtedly divine production; and so the hearts of men were
+to be wrung with pity for his sorrows as the yearning pain of a god, and
+with anger at his injuries as sacrilege on the sacredness of genius, till
+they were ready to cast themselves at his feet, and adore.
+
+Then he was to be set up on a pedestal, like Nebuchadnezzar's image on
+the plains of Dura; and what time the world heard the sound of cornet,
+sackbut, and dulcimer, in his enchanting verse, they were to fall down
+and worship.
+
+For Lady Byron, Moore had simply the respect that a commoner has for a
+lady of rank, and a good deal of the feeling that seems to underlie all
+English literature,--that it is no matter what becomes of the woman when
+the man's story is to be told.  But, with all his faults, Moore was not a
+cruel man; and we cannot conceive such outrageous cruelty and
+ungentlemanly indelicacy towards an unoffending woman, as he shows in
+these 'Memoirs,' without referring them to Lord Byron's own influence in
+making him an unscrupulous, committed partisan on his side.
+
+So little pity, so little sympathy, did he suppose Lady Byron to be
+worthy of, that he laid before her, in the sight of all the world,
+selections from her husband's letters and journals, in which the
+privacies of her courtship and married life were jested upon with a
+vulgar levity; letters filled, from the time of the act of separation,
+with a constant succession of sarcasms, stabs, stings, epigrams, and
+vindictive allusions to herself, bringing her into direct and insulting
+comparison with his various mistresses, and implying their superiority
+over her.  There, too, were gross attacks on her father and mother, as
+having been the instigators of the separation; and poor Lady Milbanke, in
+particular, is sometimes mentioned with epithets so offensive, that the
+editor prudently covers the terms with stars, as intending language too
+gross to be printed.
+
+The last mistress of Lord Byron is uniformly brought forward in terms of
+such respect and consideration, that one would suppose that the usual
+moral laws that regulate English family life had been specially repealed
+in his favour.  Moore quotes with approval letters from Shelley, stating
+that Lord Byron's connection with La Guiccioli has been of inestimable
+benefit to him; and that he is now becoming what he should be, 'a
+virtuous man.'  Moore goes on to speak of the connection as one, though
+somewhat reprehensible, yet as having all those advantages of marriage
+and settled domestic ties that Byron's affectionate spirit had long
+sighed for, but never before found; and in his last resume of the poet's
+character, at the end of the volume, he brings the mistress into direct
+comparison with the wife in a single sentence: 'The woman to whom he gave
+the love of his maturer years idolises his name; and, with a single
+unhappy exception, scarce an instance is to be found of one brought. . .
+into relations of amity with him who did not retain a kind regard for him
+in life, and a fondness for his memory.'
+
+Literature has never yet seen the instance of a person, of Lady Byron's
+rank in life, placed before the world in a position more humiliating to
+womanly dignity, or wounding to womanly delicacy.
+
+The direct implication is, that she has no feelings to be hurt, no heart
+to be broken, and is not worthy even of the consideration which in
+ordinary life is to be accorded to a widow who has received those awful
+tidings which generally must awaken many emotions, and call for some
+consideration, even in the most callous hearts.
+
+The woman who we are told walked the room, vainly striving to control the
+sobs that shook her frame, while she sought to draw from the servant that
+last message of her husband which she was never to hear, was not thought
+worthy even of the rights of common humanity.
+
+The first volume of the 'Memoir' came out in 1830.  Then for the first
+time came one flash of lightning from the silent cloud; and she who had
+never spoken before spoke out.  The libels on the memory of her dead
+parents drew from her what her own wrongs never did.  During all this
+time, while her husband had been keeping her effigy dangling before the
+public as a mark for solemn curses, and filthy lampoons, and secretly-
+circulated disclosures, that spared no sacredness and violated every
+decorum, she had not uttered a word.  She had been subjected to nameless
+insults, discussed in the assemblies of drunkards, and challenged to
+speak for herself.  Like the chaste lady in 'Comus,' whom the vile wizard
+had bound in the enchanted seat to be 'grinned at and chattered at' by
+all the filthy rabble of his dehumanised rout, she had remained pure,
+lofty, and undefiled; and the stains of mud and mire thrown upon her had
+fallen from her spotless garments.
+
+Now that she is dead, a recent writer in 'The London Quarterly' dares
+give voice to an insinuation which even Byron gave only a suggestion of
+when he called his wife Clytemnestra; and hints that she tried the power
+of youth and beauty to win to her the young solicitor Lushington, and a
+handsome young officer of high rank.
+
+At this time, such insinuations had not been thought of; and the only and
+chief allegation against Lady Byron had been a cruel severity of virtue.
+
+At all events, when Lady Byron spoke, the world listened with respect,
+and believed what she said.
+
+Here let us, too, read her statement, and give it the careful attention
+she solicits (Moore's 'Life of Byron,' vol. vi. p.275):--
+
+   'I have disregarded various publications in which facts within my own
+   knowledge have been grossly misrepresented; but I am called upon to
+   notice some of the erroneous statements proceeding from one who claims
+   to be considered as Lord Byron's confidential and authorised friend.
+   Domestic details ought not to be intruded on the public attention: if,
+   however, they are so intruded, the persons affected by them have a
+   right to refute injurious charges.  Mr. Moore has promulgated his own
+   impressions of private events in which I was most nearly concerned, as
+   if he possessed a competent knowledge of the subject.  Having survived
+   Lord Byron, I feel increased reluctance to advert to any circumstances
+   connected with the period of my marriage; nor is it now my intention
+   to disclose them further than may be indispensably requisite for the
+   end I have in view.  Self-vindication is not the motive which actuates
+   me to make this appeal, and the spirit of accusation is unmingled with
+   it; but when the conduct of my parents is brought forward in a
+   disgraceful light by the passages selected from Lord Byron's letters,
+   and by the remarks of his biographer, I feel bound to justify their
+   characters from imputations which I know to be false.  The passages
+   from Lord Byron's letters, to which I refer, are,--the aspersion on my
+   mother's character (p.648, l.4): {70a} "My child is very well and
+   flourishing, I hear; but I must see also.  I feel no disposition to
+   resign it to the contagion of its grandmother's society."  The
+   assertion of her dishonourable conduct in employing a spy (p.645, l.7,
+   etc.): "A Mrs. C. (now a kind of housekeeper and spy of Lady N's),
+   who, in her better days, was a washerwoman, is supposed to be--by the
+   learned--very much the occult cause of our domestic discrepancies."
+   The seeming exculpation of myself in the extract (p.646), with the
+   words immediately following it, "Her nearest relations are a---;"
+   where the blank clearly implies something too offensive for
+   publication.  These passages tend to throw suspicion on my parents,
+   and give reason to ascribe the separation either to their direct
+   agency, or to that of "officious spies" employed by them. {70b}  From
+   the following part of the narrative (p.642), it must also be inferred
+   that an undue influence was exercised by them for the accomplishment
+   of this purpose: "It was in a few weeks after the latter communication
+   between us (Lord Byron and Mr. Moore) that Lady Byron adopted the
+   determination of parting from him.  She had left London at the latter
+   end of January, on a visit to her father's house in Leicestershire;
+   and Lord Byron was in a short time to follow her.  They had parted in
+   the utmost kindness, she wrote him a letter, full of playfulness and
+   affection, on the road; and, immediately on her arrival at Kirkby
+   Mallory, her father wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that she would return
+   to him no more."
+
+   'In my observations upon this statement, I shall, as far as possible,
+   avoid touching on any matters relating personally to Lord Byron and
+   myself.  The facts are,--I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the
+   residence of my father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816.  Lord
+   Byron had signified to me in writing (Jan. 6) his absolute desire that
+   I should leave London on the earliest day that I could conveniently
+   fix.  It was not safe for me to undertake the fatigue of a journey
+   sooner than the 15th.  Previously to my departure, it had been
+   strongly impressed on my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence
+   of insanity.  This opinion was derived in a great measure from the
+   communications made to me by his nearest relatives and personal
+   attendant, who had more opportunities than myself of observing him
+   during the latter part of my stay in town.  It was even represented to
+   me that he was in danger of destroying himself.  With the concurrence
+   of his family, I had consulted Dr. Baillie, as a friend (Jan. 8),
+   respecting this supposed malady.  On acquainting him with the state of
+   the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave London, Dr.
+   Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable as an experiment,
+   assuming the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not having
+   had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive opinion on
+   that point.  He enjoined that, in correspondence with Lord Byron, I
+   should avoid all but light and soothing topics.  Under these
+   impressions I left London, determined to follow the advice given by
+   Dr. Baillie.  Whatever might have been the nature of Lord Byron's
+   conduct towards me from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to
+   be in a state of mental alienation, it was not for me, nor for any
+   person of common humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense of
+   injury.  On the day of my departure, and again on my arrival at Kirkby
+   (Jan. 16), I wrote to Lord Byron in a kind and cheerful tone,
+   according to those medical directions.
+
+   'The last letter was circulated, and employed as a pretext for the
+   charge of my having been subsequently influenced to "desert" {72} my
+   husband.  It has been argued that I parted from Lord Byron in perfect
+   harmony; that feelings incompatible with any deep sense of injury had
+   dictated the letter which I addressed to him; and that my sentiments
+   must have been changed by persuasion and interference when I was under
+   the roof of my parents.  These assertions and inferences are wholly
+   destitute of foundation.  When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory, my parents
+   were unacquainted with the existence of any causes likely to destroy
+   my prospects of happiness; and, when I communicated to them the
+   opinion which had been formed concerning Lord Byron's state of mind,
+   they were most anxious to promote his restoration by every means in
+   their power.  They assured those relations who were with him in
+   London, that "they would devote their whole care and attention to the
+   alleviation of his malady;" and hoped to make the best arrangements
+   for his comfort if he could be induced to visit them.
+
+   'With these intentions, my mother wrote on the 17th to Lord Byron,
+   inviting him to Kirkby Mallory.  She had always treated him with an
+   affectionate consideration and indulgence, which extended to every
+   little peculiarity of his feelings.  Never did an irritating word
+   escape her lips in her whole intercourse with him.  The accounts given
+   me after I left Lord Byron, by the persons in constant intercourse
+   with him, added to those doubts which had before transiently occurred
+   to my mind as to the reality of the alleged disease; and the reports
+   of his medical attendant were far from establishing the existence of
+   anything like lunacy.  Under this uncertainty, I deemed it right to
+   communicate to my parents, that, if I were to consider Lord Byron's
+   past conduct as that of a person of sound mind, nothing could induce
+   me to return to him.  It therefore appeared expedient, both to them
+   and myself, to consult the ablest advisers.  For that object, and also
+   to obtain still further information respecting the appearances which
+   seemed to indicate mental derangement, my mother determined to go to
+   London.  She was empowered by me to take legal opinions on a written
+   statement of mine, though I had then reasons for reserving a part of
+   the case from the knowledge even of my father and mother.  Being
+   convinced by the result of these inquiries, and by the tenor of Lord
+   Byron's proceedings, that the notion of insanity was an illusion, I no
+   longer hesitated to authorise such measures as were necessary in order
+   to secure me from being ever again placed in his power.  Conformably
+   with this resolution, my father wrote to him on the 2nd of February to
+   propose an amicable separation.  Lord Byron at first rejected this
+   proposal; but when it was distinctly notified to him that, if he
+   persisted in his refusal, recourse must be had to legal measures, he
+   agreed to sign a deed of separation.  Upon applying to Dr. Lushington,
+   who was intimately acquainted with all the circumstances, to state in
+   writing what he recollected upon this subject, I received from him the
+   following letter, by which it will be manifest that my mother cannot
+   have been actuated by any hostile or ungenerous motives towards Lord
+   Byron:--
+
+   '"MY DEAR LADY BYRON,--I can rely upon the accuracy of my memory for
+   the following statement.  I was originally consulted by Lady Noel, on
+   your behalf, whilst you were in the country.  The circumstances
+   detailed by her were such as justified a separation; but they were not
+   of that aggravated description as to render such a measure
+   indispensable.  On Lady Noel's representation, I deemed a
+   reconciliation with Lord Byron practicable, and felt most sincerely a
+   wish to aid in effecting it.  There was not on Lady Noel's part any
+   exaggeration of the facts; nor, so far as I could perceive, any
+   determination to prevent a return to Lord Byron: certainly none was
+   expressed when I spoke of a reconciliation.  When you came to town, in
+   about a fortnight, or perhaps more, after my first interview with Lady
+   Noel, I was for the first time informed by you of facts utterly
+   unknown, as I have no doubt, to Sir Ralph and Lady Noel.  On receiving
+   this additional information, my opinion was entirely changed: I
+   considered a reconciliation impossible.  I declared my opinion, and
+   added, that, if such an idea should be entertained, I could not,
+   either professionally or otherwise, take any part towards effecting
+   it.
+
+                         '"Believe me, very faithfully yours,
+
+                              '"STEPH. LUSHINGTON.
+
+   '"Great George Street, Jan. 31, 1830."
+
+   'I have only to observe, that, if the statements on which my legal
+   advisers (the late Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington) formed their
+   opinions were false, the responsibility and the odium should rest with
+   me only.  I trust that the facts which I have here briefly
+   recapitulated will absolve my father and mother from all accusations
+   with regard to the part they took in the separation between Lord Byron
+   and myself.
+
+   'They neither originated, instigated, nor advised that separation; and
+   they cannot be condemned for having afforded to their daughter the
+   assistance and protection which she claimed.  There is no other near
+   relative to vindicate their memory from insult.  I am therefore
+   compelled to break the silence which I had hoped always to observe,
+   and to solicit from the readers of Lord Byron's "Life" an impartial
+   consideration of the testimony extorted from me.
+
+                                   'A. I. NOEL BYRON.
+
+   'Hanger Hill, Feb. 19, 1830.'
+
+The effect of this statement on the literary world may be best judged by
+the discussion of it by Christopher North (Wilson) in the succeeding May
+number of 'The Noctes,' where the bravest and most generous of literary
+men that then were--himself the husband of a gentle wife--thus gives
+sentence: the conversation is between North and the Shepherd:--
+
+   North.--'God forbid I should wound the feelings of Lady Byron, of
+   whose character, known to me but by the high estimation in which it is
+   held by all who have enjoyed her friendship, I have always spoken with
+   respect! . . .  But may I, without harshness or indelicacy, say, here
+   among ourselves, James, that, by marrying Byron, she took upon
+   herself, with eyes wide open and conscience clearly convinced, duties
+   very different from those of which, even in common cases, the
+   presaging foresight shadows. . . the light of the first nuptial moon?'
+
+   Shepherd.--'She did that, sir; by my troth, she did that.'
+
+                     .          .          .          .
+
+   North.--'Miss Milbanke knew that he was reckoned a rake and a roue;
+   and although his genius wiped off, by impassioned eloquence in love-
+   letters that were felt to be irresistible, or hid the worst stain of,
+   that reproach, still Miss Milbanke must have believed it a perilous
+   thing to be the wife of Lord Byron. . . .  But still, by joining her
+   life to his in marriage, she pledged her troth and her faith and her
+   love, under probabilities of severe, disturbing, perhaps fearful
+   trials, in the future. . . .
+
+   'But I think Lady Byron ought not to have printed that Narrative.
+   Death abrogates not the rights of a husband to his wife's silence when
+   speech is fatal. . . to his character as a man.  Has she not flung
+   suspicion over his bones interred, that they are the bones of
+   a--monster? . . .  If Byron's sins or crimes--for we are driven to use
+   terrible terms--were unendurable and unforgivable as if against the
+   Holy Ghost, ought the wheel, the rack, or the stake to have extorted
+   that confession from his widow's breast? . . .  But there was no such
+   pain here, James: the declaration was voluntary, and it was calm.  Self-
+   collected, and gathering up all her faculties and feelings into
+   unshrinking strength, she denounced before all the world--and
+   throughout all space and all time--her husband, as excommunicated by
+   his vices from woman's bosom.
+
+                     .          .          .          .
+
+   ''Twas to vindicate the character of her parents that Lady Byron
+   wrote,--a holy purpose and devout, nor do I doubt sincere.  But filial
+   affection and reverence, sacred as they are, may be blamelessly, nay,
+   righteously, subordinate to conjugal duties, which die not with the
+   dead, are extinguished not even by the sins of the dead, were they as
+   foul as the grave's corruption.'
+
+Here is what John Stuart Mill calls the literature of slavery for woman,
+in length and breadth; and, that all women may understand the doctrine,
+the Shepherd now takes up his parable, and expounds the true position of
+the wife.  We render his Scotch into English:--
+
+   'Not a few such widows do I know, whom brutal, profligate, and savage
+   husbands have brought to the brink of the grave,--as good, as bright,
+   as innocent as, and far more forgiving than, Lady Byron.  There they
+   sit in their obscure, rarely-visited dwellings; for sympathy
+   instructed by suffering knows well that the deepest and most hopeless
+   misery is least given to complaint.'
+
+Then follows a pathetic picture of one such widow, trembling and fainting
+for hunger, obliged, on her way to the well for a can of water, her only
+drink, to sit down on a 'knowe' and say a prayer.
+
+   'Yet she's decently, yea, tidily dressed, poor creature! in sair worn
+   widow's clothes, a single suit for Saturday and Sunday; her hair,
+   untimely gray, is neatly braided under her crape cap; and sometimes,
+   when all is still and solitary in the fields, and all labour has
+   disappeared into the house, you may see her stealing by herself, or
+   leading one wee orphan by the hand, with another at her breast, to the
+   kirkyard, where the love of her youth and the husband of her prime is
+   buried.
+
+   'Yet,' says the Shepherd, 'he was a brute, a ruffian, a monster.  When
+   drunk, how he raged and cursed and swore!  Often did she dread that,
+   in his fits of inhuman passion, he would have murdered the baby at her
+   breast; for she had seen him dash their only little boy, a child of
+   eight years old, on the floor, till the blood gushed from his ears;
+   and then the madman threw himself down on the body, and howled for the
+   gallows.  Limmers haunted his door, and he theirs; and it was hers to
+   lie, not sleep, in a cold, forsaken bed, once the bed of peace,
+   affection, and perfect happiness.  Often he struck her; and once when
+   she was pregnant with that very orphan now smiling on her breast,
+   reaching out his wee fingers to touch the flowers on his father's
+   grave. . . .
+
+   'But she tries to smile among the neighbours, and speaks of her boy's
+   likeness to its father; nor, when the conversation turns on bygone
+   times, does she fear to let his name escape her white lips, "My
+   Robert; the bairn's not ill-favoured, but he will never look like his
+   father,"--and such sayings, uttered in a calm, sweet voice.  Nay, I
+   remember once how her pale countenance reddened with a sudden flush of
+   pride, when a gossiping crone alluded to their wedding; and the
+   widow's eye brightened through her tears to hear how the bridegroom,
+   sitting that sabbath in his front seat beside his bonny bride, had not
+   his equal for strength, stature, and all that is beauty in man, in all
+   the congregation.  That, I say, sir, whether right or wrong,
+   was--forgiveness.
+
+Here is a specimen of how even generous men had been so perverted by the
+enchantment of Lord Byron's genius, as to turn all the pathos and power
+of the strongest literature of that day against the persecuted, pure
+woman, and for the strong, wicked man.  These 'Blackwood' writers knew,
+by Byron's own filthy, ghastly writings, which had gone sorely against
+their own moral stomachs, that he was foul to the bone.  They could see,
+in Moore's 'Memoirs' right before them, how he had caught an innocent
+girl's heart by sending a love-letter, and offer of marriage, at the end
+of a long friendly correspondence,--a letter that had been written to
+show to his libertine set, and sent on the toss-up of a copper, because
+he cared nothing for it one way or the other.
+
+They admit that, having won this poor girl, he had been savage, brutal,
+drunken, cruel.  They had read the filthy taunts in 'Don Juan,' and the
+nameless abominations in the 'Autobiography.'  They had admitted among
+themselves that his honour was lost; but still this abused, desecrated
+woman must reverence her brutal master's memory, and not speak, even to
+defend the grave of her own kind father and mother.
+
+That there was no lover of her youth, that the marriage-vow had been a
+hideous, shameless cheat, is on the face of Moore's account; yet the
+'Blackwood' does not see it nor feel it, and brings up against Lady Byron
+this touching story of a poor widow, who really had had a true lover
+once,--a lover maddened, imbruted, lost, through that very drunkenness in
+which the Noctes Club were always glorying.
+
+It is because of such transgressors as Byron, such supporters as Moore
+and the Noctes Club, that there are so many helpless, cowering, broken-
+hearted, abject women, given over to the animal love which they share
+alike with the poor dog,--the dog, who, beaten, kicked, starved, and
+cuffed, still lies by his drunken master with great anxious eyes of love
+and sorrow, and with sweet, brute forgiveness nestles upon his bosom, as
+he lies in his filth in the snowy ditch, to keep the warmth of life in
+him.  Great is the mystery of this fidelity in the poor, loving
+brute,--most mournful and most sacred
+
+But, oh that a noble man should have no higher ideal of the love of a
+high-souled, heroic woman!  Oh that men should teach women that they owe
+no higher duties, and are capable of no higher tenderness, than this
+loving, unquestioning animal fidelity!  The dog is ever-loving,
+ever-forgiving, because God has given him no high range of moral
+faculties, no sense of justice, no consequent horror at impurity and
+vileness.
+
+Much of the beautiful patience and forgiveness of women is made possible
+to them by that utter deadness to the sense of justice which the laws,
+literature, and misunderstood religion of England have sought to induce
+in woman as a special grace and virtue.
+
+The lesson to woman in this pathetic piece of special pleading is, that
+man may sink himself below the brute, may wallow in filth like the swine,
+may turn his home into a hell, beat and torture his children, forsake the
+marriage-bed for foul rivals; yet all this does not dissolve the marriage-
+vow on her part, nor free his bounden serf from her obligation to honour
+his memory,--nay, to sacrifice to it the honour due to a kind father and
+mother, slandered in their silent graves.
+
+Such was the sympathy, and such the advice, that the best literature of
+England could give to a young widow, a peeress of England, whose husband,
+as they verily believed and admitted, might have done worse than all
+this; whose crimes might have been 'foul, monstrous, unforgivable as the
+sin against the Holy Ghost.'  If these things be done in the green tree,
+what shall be done in the dry?  If the peeress as a wife has no rights,
+what is the state of the cotter's wife?
+
+But, in the same paper, North again blames Lady Byron for not having come
+out with the whole story before the world at the time she separated from
+her husband.  He says of the time when she first consulted counsel
+through her mother, keeping back one item,--
+
+   'How weak, and worse than weak, at such a juncture, on which hung her
+   whole fate, to ask legal advice on an imperfect document!  Give the
+   delicacy of a virtuous woman its due; but at such a crisis, when the
+   question was whether her conscience was to be free from the oath of
+   oaths, delicacy should have died, and nature was privileged to show
+   unashamed--if such there were--the records of uttermost pollution.'
+
+   Shepherd.--'And what think ye, sir, that a' this pollution could hae
+   been, that sae electrified Dr. Lushington?'
+
+   North.--'Bad--bad--bad, James.  Nameless, it is horrible; named, it
+   might leave Byron's memory yet within the range of pity and
+   forgiveness; and, where they are, their sister affections will not be
+   far; though, like weeping seraphs, standing aloof, and veiling their
+   wings.'
+
+   Shepherd.--'She should indeed hae been silent--till the grave had
+   closed on her sorrows as on his sins.'
+
+   North.--'Even now she should speak,--or some one else for her,-- . . .
+   and a few words will suffice.  Worse the condition of the dead man's
+   name cannot be--far, far better it might--I believe it would be--were
+   all the truth somehow or other declared; and declared it must be, not
+   for Byron's sake only, but for the sake of humanity itself; and then a
+   mitigated sentence, or eternal silence.'
+
+We have another discussion of Lady Byron's duties in a further number of
+'Blackwood.'
+
+The 'Memoir' being out, it was proposed that there should be a complete
+annotation of Byron's works gotten up, and adorned, for the further
+glorification of his memory, with portraits of the various women whom he
+had delighted to honour.
+
+Murray applied to Lady Byron for her portrait, and was met with a cold,
+decided negative.  After reading all the particulars of Byron's harem of
+mistresses, and Moore's comparisons between herself and La Guiccioli, one
+might imagine reasons why a lady, with proper self-respect, should object
+to appearing in this manner.  One would suppose there might have been
+gentlemen who could well appreciate the motive of that refusal; but it
+was only considered a new evidence that she was indifferent to her
+conjugal duties, and wanting in that respect which Christopher North had
+told her she owed a husband's memory, though his crimes were foul as the
+rottenness of the grave.
+
+Never, since Queen Vashti refused to come at the command of a drunken
+husband to show herself to his drunken lords, was there a clearer case of
+disrespect to the marital dignity on the part of a wife.  It was a plain
+act of insubordination, rebellion against law and order; and how shocking
+in Lady Byron, who ought to feel herself but too much flattered to be
+exhibited to the public as the head wife of a man of genius!
+
+Means were at once adopted to subdue her contumacy, of which one may read
+in a note to the 'Blackwood' (Noctes), September 1832.  An artist was
+sent down to Ealing to take her picture by stealth as she sat in church.
+Two sittings were thus obtained without her knowledge.  In the third one,
+the artist placed himself boldly before her, and sketched, so that she
+could not but observe him.  We shall give the rest in Mackenzie's own
+words, as a remarkable specimen of the obtuseness, not to say indelicacy
+of feeling, which seemed to pervade the literary circles of England at
+the time:--
+
+   'After prayers, Wright and his friend (the artist) were visited by an
+   ambassador from her ladyship to inquire the meaning of what she had
+   seen.  The reply was, that Mr. Murray must have her portrait, and was
+   compelled to take what she refused to give.  The result was, Wright
+   was requested to visit her, which he did; taking with him, not the
+   sketch, which was very good, but another, in which there was a strong
+   touch of caricature.  Rather than allow that to appear as her likeness
+   (a very natural and womanly feeling by the way), she consented to sit
+   for the portrait to W. J. Newton, which was engraved, and is here
+   alluded to.'
+
+The artless barbarism of this note is too good to be lost; but it is
+quite borne out by the conversation in the Noctes Club, which it
+illustrates.
+
+It would appear from this conversation that these Byron beauties appeared
+successively in pamphlet form; and the picture of Lady Byron is thus
+discussed:--
+
+   Mullion.--'I don't know if you have seen the last brochure.  It has a
+   charming head of Lady Byron, who, it seems, sat on purpose: and that's
+   very agreeable to hear of; for it shows her ladyship has got over any
+   little soreness that Moore's "Life" occasioned, and is now willing to
+   contribute anything in her power to the real monument of Byron's
+   genius.'
+
+   North.--'I am delighted to hear of this: 'tis really very noble in the
+   unfortunate lady.  I never saw her.  Is the face a striking one?'
+
+   Mullion.--'Eminently so,--a most calm, pensive, melancholy style of
+   native beauty,--and a most touching contrast to the maids of Athens,
+   Annesley, and all the rest of them.  I'm sure you'll have the proof
+   Finden has sent you framed for the Boudoir at the Lodge.'
+
+   North.--'By all means.  I mean to do that for all the Byron Beauties.'
+
+But it may be asked, Was there not a man in all England with delicacy
+enough to feel for Lady Byron, and chivalry enough to speak a bold word
+for her?  Yes: there was one.  Thomas Campbell the poet, when he read
+Lady Byron's statement, believed it, as did Christopher North; but it
+affected him differently.  It appears he did not believe it a wife's duty
+to burn herself on her husband's funeral-pile, as did Christopher North;
+and held the singular idea, that a wife had some rights as a human being
+as well as a husband.
+
+Lady Byron's own statement appeared in pamphlet form in 1830: at least,
+such is the date at the foot of the document.  Thomas Campbell, in 'The
+New Monthly Magazine,' shortly after, printed a spirited, gentlemanly
+defence of Lady Byron, and administered a pointed rebuke to Moore for the
+rudeness and indelicacy he had shown in selecting from Byron's letters
+the coarsest against herself, her parents, and her old governess Mrs.
+Clermont, and by the indecent comparisons he had instituted between Lady
+Byron and Lord Byron's last mistress.
+
+It is refreshing to hear, at last, from somebody who is not altogether on
+his knees at the feet of the popular idol, and who has some chivalry for
+woman, and some idea of common humanity.  He says,--
+
+   'I found my right to speak on this painful subject on its now
+   irrevocable publicity, brought up afresh as it has been by Mr. Moore,
+   to be the theme of discourse to millions, and, if I err not much, the
+   cause of misconception to innumerable minds.  I claim to speak of Lady
+   Byron in the right of a man, and of a friend to the rights of woman,
+   and to liberty, and to natural religion.  I claim a right, more
+   especially, as one of the many friends of Lady Byron, who, one and
+   all, feel aggrieved by this production.  It has virtually dragged her
+   forward from the shade of retirement, where she had hid her sorrows,
+   and compelled her to defend the heads of her friends and her parents
+   from being crushed under the tombstone of Byron.  Nay, in a general
+   view, it has forced her to defend herself; though, with her true sense
+   and her pure taste, she stands above all special pleading.  To plenary
+   explanation she ought not--she never shall be driven.  Mr. Moore is
+   too much a gentleman not to shudder at the thought of that; but if
+   other Byronists, of a far different stamp, were to force the savage
+   ordeal, it is her enemies, and not she, that would have to dread the
+   burning ploughshares.
+
+   'We, her friends, have no wish to prolong the discussion: but a few
+   words we must add, even to her admirable statement; for hers is a
+   cause not only dear to her friends, but having become, from Mr. Moore
+   and her misfortunes, a publicly-agitated cause, it concerns morality,
+   and the most sacred rights of the sex, that she should (and that, too,
+   without more special explanations) be acquitted out and out, and
+   honourably acquitted, in this business, of all share in the blame,
+   which is one and indivisible.  Mr. Moore, on further reflection, may
+   see this; and his return to candour will surprise us less than his
+   momentary deviation from its path.
+
+   'For the tact of Mr. Moore's conduct in this affair, I have not to
+   answer; but, if indelicacy be charged upon me, I scorn the charge.
+   Neither will I submit to be called Lord Byron's accuser; because a
+   word against him I wish not to say beyond what is painfully wrung from
+   me by the necessity of owning or illustrating Lady Byron's
+   unblamableness, and of repelling certain misconceptions respecting
+   her, which are now walking the fashionable world, and which have been
+   fostered (though Heaven knows where they were born) most delicately
+   and warily by the Christian godfathership of Mr. Moore.
+
+   'I write not at Lady Byron's bidding.  I have never humiliated either
+   her or myself by asking if I should write, or what I should write;
+   that is to say, I never applied to her for information against Lord
+   Byron, though I was justified, as one intending to criticise Mr.
+   Moore, in inquiring into the truth of some of his statements.  Neither
+   will I suffer myself to be called her champion, if by that word be
+   meant the advocate of her mere legal innocence; for that, I take it,
+   nobody questions.
+
+   'Still less is it from the sorry impulse of pity that I speak of this
+   noble woman; for I look with wonder and even envy at the proud purity
+   of her sense and conscience, that have carried her exquisite
+   sensibilities in triumph through such poignant tribulations.  But I am
+   proud to be called her friend, the humble illustrator of her cause,
+   and the advocate of those principles which make it to me more
+   interesting than Lord Byron's.  Lady Byron (if the subject must be
+   discussed) belongs to sentiment and morality (at least as much as Lord
+   Byron); nor is she to be suffered, when compelled to speak, to raise
+   her voice as in a desert, with no friendly voice to respond to her.
+   Lady Byron could not have outlived her sufferings if she had not wound
+   up her fortitude to the high point of trusting mainly for consolation,
+   not to the opinion of the world, but to her own inward peace; and,
+   having said what ought to convince the world, I verily believe that
+   she has less care about the fashionable opinion respecting her than
+   any of her friends can have.  But we, her friends, mix with the world;
+   and we hear offensive absurdities about her, which we have a right to
+   put down.
+
+                     .          .          .          .
+
+   'I proceed to deal more generally with Mr. Moore's book.  You speak,
+   Mr. Moore, against Lord Byron's censurers in a tone of indignation
+   which is perfectly lawful towards calumnious traducers, but which will
+   not terrify me, or any other man of courage who is no calumniator,
+   from uttering his mind freely with regard to this part of your hero's
+   conduct.  I question your philosophy in assuming that all that is
+   noble in Byron's poetry was inconsistent with the possibility of his
+   being devoted to a pure and good woman; and I repudiate your morality
+   for canting too complacently about "the lava of his imagination," and
+   the unsettled fever of his passions, being any excuses for his
+   planting the tic douloureux of domestic suffering in a meek woman's
+   bosom.
+
+   'These are hard words, Mr. Moore; but you have brought them on
+   yourself by your voluntary ignorance of facts known to me; for you
+   might and ought to have known both sides of the question; and, if the
+   subject was too delicate for you to consult Lady Byron's confidential
+   friends, you ought to have had nothing to do with the subject.  But
+   you cannot have submitted your book even to Lord Byron's sister,
+   otherwise she would have set you right about the imaginary spy, Mrs.
+   Clermont.'
+
+Campbell now goes on to print, at his own peril, he says, and without
+time to ask leave, the following note from Lady Byron in reply to an
+application he made to her, when he was about to review Moore's book, for
+an 'estimate as to the correctness of Moore's statements.'
+
+The following is Lady Byron's reply:--
+
+   'DEAR MR. CAMPBELL,--In taking up my pen to point out for your private
+   information {86} those passages in Mr. Moore's representation of my
+   part of the story which were open to contradiction, I find them of
+   still greater extent than I had supposed; and to deny an assertion
+   here and there would virtually admit the truth of the rest.  If, on
+   the contrary, I were to enter into a full exposure of the falsehood of
+   the views taken by Mr. Moore, I must detail various matters, which,
+   consistently with my principles and feelings, I cannot under the
+   existing circumstances disclose.  I may, perhaps, convince you better
+   of the difficulty of the case by an example: It is not true that
+   pecuniary embarrassments were the cause of the disturbed state of Lord
+   Byron's mind, or formed the chief reason for the arrangements made by
+   him at that time.  But is it reasonable for me to expect that you or
+   any one else should believe this, unless I show you what were the
+   causes in question? and this I cannot do.
+
+                        'I am, etc.,
+
+                                    'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+Campbell then goes on to reprove Moore for his injustice to Mrs.
+Clermont, whom Lord Byron had denounced as a spy, but whose
+respectability and innocence were vouched for by Lord Byron's own family;
+and then he pointedly rebukes one false statement of great indelicacy and
+cruelty concerning Lady Byron's courtship, as follows:--
+
+   'It is a further mistake on Mr. Moore's part, and I can prove it to be
+   so, if proof be necessary, to represent Lady Byron, in the course of
+   their courtship, as one inviting her future husband to correspondence
+   by letters after she had at first refused him.  She never proposed a
+   correspondence.  On the contrary, he sent her a message after that
+   first refusal, stating that he meant to go abroad, and to travel for
+   some years in the East; that he should depart with a heart aching, but
+   not angry; and that he only begged a verbal assurance that she had
+   still some interest in his happiness.  Could Miss Milbanke, as a well-
+   bred woman, refuse a courteous answer to such a message?  She sent him
+   a verbal answer, which was merely kind and becoming, but which
+   signified no encouragement that he should renew his offer of marriage.
+
+   'After that message, he wrote to her a most interesting letter about
+   himself,--about his views, personal, moral, and religious,--to which
+   it would have been uncharitable not to have replied.  The result was
+   an insensibly increasing correspondence, which ended in her being
+   devotedly attached to him.  About that time, I occasionally saw Lord
+   Byron; and though I knew less of him than Mr. Moore, yet I suspect I
+   knew as much of him as Miss Milbanke then knew.  At that time, he was
+   so pleasing, that, if I had had a daughter with ample fortune and
+   beauty, I should have trusted her in marriage with Lord Byron.
+
+   'Mr. Moore at that period evidently understood Lord Byron better than
+   either his future bride or myself; but this speaks more for Moore's
+   shrewdness than for Byron's ingenuousness of character.
+
+   'It is more for Lord Byron's sake than for his widow's that I resort
+   not to a more special examination of Mr. Moore's misconceptions.  The
+   subject would lead me insensibly into hateful disclosures against poor
+   Lord Byron, who is more unfortunate in his rash defenders than in his
+   reluctant accusers.  Happily, his own candour turns our hostility from
+   himself against his defenders.  It was only in wayward and bitter
+   remarks that he misrepresented Lady Byron.  He would have defended
+   himself irresistibly if Mr. Moore had left only his acknowledging
+   passages.  But Mr. Moore has produced a "Life" of him which reflects
+   blame on Lady Byron so dexterously, that "more is meant than meets the
+   ear."  The almost universal impression produced by his book is, that
+   Lady Byron must be a precise and a wan, unwarming spirit, a
+   blue-stocking of chilblained learning, a piece of insensitive
+   goodness.
+
+   'Who that knows Lady Byron will not pronounce her to be everything the
+   reverse?  Will it be believed that this person, so unsuitably matched
+   to her moody lord, has written verses that would do no discredit to
+   Byron himself; that her sensitiveness is surpassed and bounded only by
+   her good sense; and that she is
+
+   '"Blest with a temper, whose unclouded ray
+   Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day"?
+
+   'She brought to Lord Byron beauty, manners, fortune, meekness,
+   romantic affection, and everything that ought to have made her to the
+   most transcendent man of genius--had he been what he should have
+   been--his pride and his idol.  I speak not of Lady Byron in the
+   commonplace manner of attesting character: I appeal to the gifted Mrs.
+   Siddons and Joanna Baillie, to Lady Charlemont, and to other ornaments
+   of their sex, whether I am exaggerating in the least when I say, that,
+   in their whole lives, they have seen few beings so intellectual and
+   well-tempered as Lady Byron.
+
+   'I wish to be as ingenuous as possible in speaking of her.  Her
+   manner, I have no hesitation to say, is cool at the first interview,
+   but is modestly, and not insolently, cool: she contracted it, I
+   believe, from being exposed by her beauty and large fortune, in youth,
+   to numbers of suitors, whom she could not have otherwise kept at a
+   distance.  But this manner could have had no influence with Lord
+   Byron; for it vanishes on nearer acquaintance, and has no origin in
+   coldness.  All her friends like her frankness the better for being
+   preceded by this reserve.  This manner, however, though not the
+   slightest apology for Lord Byron, has been inimical to Lady Byron in
+   her misfortunes.  It endears her to her friends; but it piques the
+   indifferent.  Most odiously unjust, therefore, is Mr. Moore's
+   assertion, that she has had the advantage of Lord Byron in public
+   opinion.  She is, comparatively speaking, unknown to the world; for
+   though she has many friends, that is, a friend in everyone who knows
+   her, yet her pride and purity and misfortunes naturally contract the
+   circle of her acquaintance.
+
+   'There is something exquisitely unjust in Mr. Moore comparing her
+   chance of popularity with Lord Byron's, the poet who can command men
+   of talents,--putting even Mr. Moore into the livery of his
+   service,--and who has suborned the favour of almost all women by the
+   beauty of his person and the voluptuousness of his verses.  Lady Byron
+   has nothing to oppose to these fascinations but the truth and justice
+   of her cause.
+
+   'You said, Mr. Moore, that Lady Byron was unsuitable to her lord: the
+   word is cunningly insidious, and may mean as much or as little as may
+   suit your convenience.  But, if she was unsuitable, I remark that it
+   tells all the worse against Lord Byron.  I have not read it in your
+   book (for I hate to wade through it); but they tell me that you have
+   not only warily depreciated Lady Byron, but that you have described a
+   lady that would have suited him.  If this be true, "it is the
+   unkindest cut of all,"--to hold up a florid description of a woman
+   suitable to Lord Byron, as if in mockery over the forlorn flower of
+   virtue that was drooping in the solitude of sorrow.
+
+   'But I trust there is no such passage in your book.  Surely you must
+   be conscious of your woman, with her 'virtue loose about her, who
+   would have suited Lord Byron," to be as imaginary a being as the woman
+   without a head.  A woman to suit Lord Byron!  Poo, poo!  I could paint
+   to you the woman that could have matched him, if I had not bargained
+   to say as little as possible against him.
+
+   'If Lady Byron was not suitable to Lord Byron, so much the worse for
+   his lordship; for let me tell you, Mr. Moore, that neither your
+   poetry, nor Lord Byron's, nor all our poetry put together, ever
+   delineated a more interesting being than the woman whom you have so
+   coldly treated.  This was not kicking the dead lion, but wounding the
+   living lamb, who was already bleeding and shorn, even unto the quick.
+   I know, that, collectively speaking, the world is in Lady Byron's
+   favour; but it is coldly favourable, and you have not warmed its
+   breath.  Time, however, cures everything; and even your book, Mr.
+   Moore, may be the means of Lady Byron's character being better
+   appreciated.
+
+                                  'THOMAS CAMPBELL.'
+
+Here is what seems to be a gentlemanly, high-spirited, chivalric man,
+throwing down his glove in the lists for a pure woman.
+
+What was the consequence?  Campbell was crowded back, thrust down,
+overwhelmed, his eyes filled with dust, his mouth with ashes.
+
+There was a general confusion and outcry, which reacted both on him and
+on Lady Byron.  Her friends were angry with him for having caused this re-
+action upon her; and he found himself at once attacked by Lady Byron's
+enemies, and deserted by her friends.  All the literary authorities of
+his day took up against him with energy.  Christopher North, professor of
+moral philosophy in the Edinburgh University, in a fatherly talk in 'The
+Noctes,' condemns Campbell, and justifies Moore, and heartily recommends
+his 'Biography,' as containing nothing materially objectionable on the
+score either of manners or morals.  Thus we have it in 'The Noctes' of
+May 1830:--
+
+   'Mr. Moore's biographical book I admired; and I said so to my little
+   world, in two somewhat lengthy articles, which many approved, and
+   some, I am sorry to know, condemned.'
+
+On the point in question between Moore and Campbell, North goes on to
+justify Moore altogether, only admitting that 'it would have been better
+had he not printed any coarse expression of Byron's about the old
+people;' and, finally, he closes by saying,--
+
+   'I do not think that, under the circumstances, Mr. Campbell himself,
+   had he written Byron's "Life," could have spoken, with the sentiments
+   he then held, in a better, more manly, and more gentlemanly spirit, in
+   so far as regards Lady Byron, than Mr. Moore did: and I am sorry he
+   has been deterred from "swimming" through Mr. Moore's work by the fear
+   of "wading;" for the waters are clear and deep; nor is there any mud,
+   either at the bottom or round the margin.'
+
+Of the conduct of Lady Byron's so-called friends on this occasion it is
+more difficult to speak.
+
+There has always been in England, as John Stuart Mill says, a class of
+women who glory in the utter self-abnegation of the wife to the husband,
+as the special crown of womanhood.  Their patron saint is the Griselda of
+Chaucer, who, when her husband humiliates her, and treats her as a brute,
+still accepts all with meek, unquestioning, uncomplaining devotion.  He
+tears her from her children; he treats her with personal abuse; he
+repudiates her,--sends her out to nakedness and poverty; he installs
+another mistress in his house, and sends for the first to be her handmaid
+and his own: and all this the meek saint accepts in the words of Milton,--
+
+      'My guide and head,
+   What thou hast said is just and right.'
+
+Accordingly, Miss Martineau tells us that when Campbell's defence came
+out, coupled with a note from Lady Byron,--
+
+   'The first obvious remark was, that there was no real disclosure; and
+   the whole affair had the appearance of a desire, on the part of Lady
+   Byron, to exculpate herself, while yet no adequate information was
+   given.  Many, who had regarded her with favour till then, gave her up
+   so far as to believe that feminine weakness had prevailed at last.'
+
+The saint had fallen from her pedestal! She had shown a human frailty!
+Quite evidently she is not a Griselda, but possessed with a shocking
+desire to exculpate herself and her friends.
+
+Is it, then, only to slandered men that the privilege belongs of desiring
+to exculpate themselves and their families and their friends from unjust
+censure?
+
+Lord Byron had made it a life-long object to vilify and defame his wife.
+He had used for that one particular purpose every talent that he
+possessed.  He had left it as a last charge to Moore to pursue the
+warfare after death, which Moore had done to some purpose; and
+Christopher North had informed Lady Byron that her private affairs were
+discussed, not only with the whisky-toddy of the Noctes Club, but in
+every drawing-room in May Fair; and declared that the 'Dear Duck' letter,
+and various other matters, must be explained, and urged somebody to
+speak; and then, when Campbell does speak with all the energy of a real
+gentleman, a general outcry and an indiscriminate melee is the result.
+
+The world, with its usual injustice, insisted on attributing Campbell's
+defence to Lady Byron.
+
+The reasons for this seemed to be, first, that Campbell states that he
+did not ask Lady Byron's leave, and that she did not authorise him to
+defend her; and, second, that, having asked some explanations from her,
+he prints a note in which she declines to give any.
+
+We know not how a lady could more gently yet firmly decline to make a
+gentleman her confidant than in this published note of Lady Byron; and
+yet, to this day, Campbell is spoken of by the world as having been Lady
+Byron's confidant at this time.  This simply shows how very trustworthy
+are the general assertions about Lady Byron's confidants.
+
+The final result of the matter, so far as Campbell was concerned, is
+given in Miss Martineau's sketch, in the following paragraph:--
+
+   'The whole transaction was one of poor Campbell's freaks.  He excused
+   himself by saying it was a mistake of his; that he did not know what
+   he was about when he published the paper.'
+
+It is the saddest of all sad things to see a man, who has spoken from
+moral convictions, in advance of his day, and who has taken a stand for
+which he ought to honour himself, thus forced down and humiliated, made
+to doubt his own better nature and his own honourable feelings, by the
+voice of a wicked world.
+
+Campbell had no steadiness to stand by the truth he saw.  His whole story
+is told incidentally in a note to 'The Noctes,' in which it is stated,
+that in an article in 'Blackwood,' January 1825, on Scotch poets, the
+palm was given to Hogg over Campbell; 'one ground being, that he could
+drink "eight and twenty tumblers of punch, while Campbell is hazy upon
+seven."'
+
+There is evidence in 'The Noctes,' that in due time Campbell was
+reconciled to Moore, and was always suitably ashamed of having tried to
+be any more generous or just than the men of his generation.
+
+And so it was settled as a law to Jacob, and an ordinance in Israel, that
+the Byron worship should proceed, and that all the earth should keep
+silence before him.  'Don Juan,' that, years before, had been printed by
+stealth, without Murray's name on the title-page, that had been denounced
+as a book which no woman should read, and had been given up as a
+desperate enterprise, now came forth in triumph, with banners flying and
+drums beating.  Every great periodical in England that had fired moral
+volleys of artillery against it in its early days, now humbly marched in
+the glorious procession of admirers to salute this edifying work of
+genius.
+
+'Blackwood,' which in the beginning had been the most indignantly
+virtuous of the whole, now grovelled and ate dust as the serpent in the
+very abjectness of submission.  Odoherty (Maginn) declares that he would
+rather have written a page of 'Don Juan' than a ton of 'Childe Harold.'
+{95a}  Timothy Tickler informs Christopher North that he means to tender
+Murray, as Emperor of the North, an interleaved copy {95b} of 'Don Juan,'
+with illustrations, as the only work of Byron's he cares much about; and
+Christopher North, professor of moral philosophy in Edinburgh, smiles
+approval!  We are not, after this, surprised to see the assertion, by a
+recent much-aggrieved writer in 'The London Era,' that 'Lord Byron has
+been, more than any other man of the age, the teacher of the youth of
+England;' and that he has 'seen his works on the bookshelves of bishops'
+palaces, no less than on the tables of university undergraduates.'
+
+A note to 'The Noctes' of July 1822 informs us of another instance of
+Lord Byron's triumph over English morals:--
+
+   'The mention of this' (Byron's going to Greece) 'reminds me, by the
+   by, of what the Guiccioli said in her visit to London, where she was
+   so lionised as having been the lady-love of Byron.  She was rather
+   fond of speaking on the subject, designating herself by some Venetian
+   pet phrase, which she interpreted as meaning "Love-Wife."'
+
+What was Lady Byron to do in such a world?  She retired to the deepest
+privacy, and devoted herself to works of charity, and the education of
+her only child, that brilliant daughter, to whose eager, opening mind the
+whole course of current literature must bring so many trying questions in
+regard to the position of her father and mother,--questions that the
+mother might not answer.  That the cruel inconsiderateness of the
+literary world added thorns to the intricacies of the path trodden by
+every mother who seeks to guide, restrain, and educate a strong, acute,
+and precociously intelligent child, must easily be seen.
+
+What remains to be said of Lady Byron's life shall be said in the words
+of Miss Martineau, published in 'The Atlantic Monthly:'--
+
+   'Her life, thenceforth, was one of unremitting bounty to society
+   administered with as much skill and prudence as benevolence.  She
+   lived in retirement, changing her abode frequently; partly for the
+   benefit of her child's education and the promotion of her benevolent
+   schemes, and partly from a restlessness which was one of the few signs
+   of injury received from the spoiling of associations with home.
+
+   'She felt a satisfaction which her friends rejoiced in when her
+   daughter married Lord King, at present the Earl of Lovelace, in 1835;
+   and when grief upon grief followed, in the appearance of mortal
+   disease in her only child, her quiet patience stood her in good stead
+   as before.  She even found strength to appropriate the blessings of
+   the occasion, and took comfort, as did her dying daughter, in the
+   intimate friendship, which grew closer as the time of parting drew
+   nigh.
+
+   'Lady Lovelace died in 1852; and, for her few remaining years, Lady
+   Byron was devoted to her grandchildren.  But nearer calls never
+   lessened her interest in remoter objects.  Her mind was of the large
+   and clear quality which could comprehend remote interests in their
+   true proportions, and achieve each aim as perfectly as if it were the
+   only one.  Her agents used to say that it was impossible to mistake
+   her directions; and thus her business was usually well done.  There
+   was no room, in her case, for the ordinary doubts, censures, and
+   sneers about the misapplication of bounty.
+
+   'Her taste did not lie in the "Charity-Ball" direction; her funds were
+   not lavished in encouraging hypocrisy and improvidence among the idle
+   and worthless; and the quality of her charity was, in fact, as
+   admirable as its quantity.  Her chief aim was the extension and
+   improvement of popular education; but there was no kind of misery that
+   she heard of that she did not palliate to the utmost, and no kind of
+   solace that her quick imagination and sympathy could devise that she
+   did not administer.
+
+   'In her methods, she united consideration and frankness with singular
+   success.  For one instance among a thousand: A lady with whom she had
+   had friendly relations some time before, and who became impoverished
+   in a quiet way by hopeless sickness, preferred poverty with an easy
+   conscience to a competency attended by some uncertainty about the
+   perfect rectitude of the resource.  Lady Byron wrote to an
+   intermediate person exactly what she thought of the case.  Whether the
+   judgment of the sufferer was right or mistaken was nobody's business
+   but her own: this was the first point.  Next, a voluntary poverty
+   could never be pitied by anybody: that was the second.  But it was
+   painful to others to think of the mortification to benevolent feelings
+   which attends poverty; and there could be no objection to arresting
+   that pain.  Therefore she, Lady Byron, had lodged in a neighbouring
+   bank the sum of one hundred pounds, to be used for benevolent
+   purposes; and, in order to preclude all outside speculation, she had
+   made the money payable to the order of the intermediate person, so
+   that the sufferer's name need not appear at all.
+
+   'Five and thirty years of unremitting secret bounty like this must
+   make up a great amount of human happiness; but this was only one of a
+   wide variety of methods of doing good.  It was the unconcealable
+   magnitude of her beneficence, and its wise quality, which made her a
+   second time the theme of English conversation in all honest households
+   within the four seas.  Years ago, it was said far and wide that Lady
+   Byron was doing more good than anybody else in England; and it was
+   difficult to imagine how anybody could do more.
+
+   'Lord Byron spent every shilling that the law allowed him out of her
+   property while he lived, and left away from her every shilling that he
+   could deprive her of by his will; yet she had, eventually, a large
+   income at her command.  In the management of it, she showed the same
+   wise consideration that marked all her practical decisions.  She
+   resolved to spend her whole income, seeing how much the world needed
+   help at the moment.  Her care was for the existing generation, rather
+   than for a future one, which would have its own friends.  She usually
+   declined trammelling herself with annual subscriptions to charities;
+   preferring to keep her freedom from year to year, and to achieve
+   definite objects by liberal bounty, rather than to extend partial help
+   over a large surface which she could not herself superintend.
+
+   'It was her first industrial school that awakened the admiration of
+   the public, which had never ceased to take an interest in her, while
+   sorely misjudging her character.  We hear much now--and everybody
+   hears it with pleasure--of the spread of education in "common things;"
+   but long before Miss Coutts inherited her wealth, long before a name
+   was found for such a method of training, Lady Byron had instituted the
+   thing, and put it in the way of making its own name.
+
+   'She was living at Ealing, in Middlesex, in 1834; and there she opened
+   one of the first industrial schools in England, if not the very first.
+   She sent out a master to Switzerland, to be instructed in De
+   Fellenburgh's method.  She took, on lease, five acres of land, and
+   spent several hundred pounds in rendering the buildings upon it fit
+   for the purposes of the school.  A liberal education was afforded to
+   the children of artisans and labourers during the half of the day when
+   they were not employed in the field or garden.  The allotments were
+   rented by the boys, who raised and sold produce, which afforded them a
+   considerable yearly profit if they were good workmen.  Those who
+   worked in the field earned wages; their labour being paid by the hour,
+   according to the capability of the young labourer.  They kept their
+   accounts of expenditure and receipts, and acquired good habits of
+   business while learning the occupation of their lives.  Some
+   mechanical trades were taught, as well as the arts of agriculture.
+
+   'Part of the wisdom of the management lay in making the pupils pay.  Of
+   one hundred pupils, half were boarders.  They paid little more than
+   half the expenses of their maintenance, and the day-scholars paid
+   threepence per week.  Of course, a large part of the expense was borne
+   by Lady Byron, besides the payments she made for children who could
+   not otherwise have entered the school.  The establishment flourished
+   steadily till 1852, when the owner of the land required it back for
+   building purposes.  During the eighteen years that the Ealing schools
+   were in action, they did a world of good in the way of incitement and
+   example.  The poor-law commissioners pointed out their merits.  Land-
+   owners and other wealthy persons visited them, and went home and set
+   up similar establishments.  During those years, too, Lady Byron had
+   herself been at work in various directions to the same purpose.
+
+   'A more extensive industrial scheme was instituted on her
+   Leicestershire property, and not far off she opened a girls' school
+   and an infant school; and when a season of distress came, as such
+   seasons are apt to befall the poor Leicestershire stocking-weavers,
+   Lady Byron fed the children for months together, till they could
+   resume their payments.  These schools were opened in 1840.  The next
+   year, she built a schoolhouse on her Warwickshire property; and, five
+   years later, she set up an iron schoolhouse on another Leicestershire
+   estate.
+
+   'By this time, her educational efforts were costing her several
+   hundred pounds a year in the mere maintenance of existing
+   establishments; but this is the smallest consideration in the case.
+   She has sent out tribes of boys and girls into life fit to do their
+   part there with skill and credit and comfort.  Perhaps it is a still
+   more important consideration, that scores of teachers and trainers
+   have been led into their vocation, and duly prepared for it, by what
+   they saw and learned in her schools.  As for the best and the worst of
+   the Ealing boys, the best have, in a few cases, been received into the
+   Battersea Training School, whence they could enter on their career as
+   teachers to the greatest advantage; and the worst found their school a
+   true reformatory, before reformatory schools were heard of.  At
+   Bristol, she bought a house for a reformatory for girls; and there her
+   friend, Miss Carpenter, faithfully and energetically carries out her
+   own and Lady Byron's aims, which were one and the same.
+
+   'There would be no end if I were to catalogue the schemes of which
+   these are a specimen.  It is of more consequence to observe that her
+   mind was never narrowed by her own acts, as the minds of benevolent
+   people are so apt to be.  To the last, her interest in great political
+   movements, at home and abroad, was as vivid as ever.  She watched
+   every step won in philosophy, every discovery in science, every token
+   of social change and progress in every shape.  Her mind was as liberal
+   as her heart and hand.  No diversity of opinion troubled her: she was
+   respectful to every sort of individuality, and indulgent to all
+   constitutional peculiarities.  It must have puzzled those who kept up
+   the notion of her being "strait-laced" to see how indulgent she was
+   even to Epicurean tendencies,--the remotest of all from her own.
+
+   'But I must stop; for I do not wish my honest memorial to degenerate
+   into panegyric.  Among her latest known acts were her gifts to the
+   Sicilian cause, and her manifestations on behalf of the antislavery
+   cause in the United States.  Her kindness to William and Ellen Craft
+   must be well known there; and it is also related in the newspapers,
+   that she bequeathed a legacy to a young American to assist him under
+   any disadvantages he might suffer as an abolitionist.
+
+   'All these deeds were done under a heavy burden of ill health.  Before
+   she had passed middle life, her lungs were believed to be irreparably
+   injured by partial ossification.  She was subject to attacks so
+   serious, that each one, for many years, was expected to be the last.
+   She arranged her affairs in correspondence with her liabilities: so
+   that the same order would have been found, whether she died suddenly
+   or after long warning.
+
+   'She was to receive one more accession of outward greatness before she
+   departed.  She became Baroness Wentworth in November, 1856.  This is
+   one of the facts of her history; but it is the least interesting to
+   us, as probably to her.  We care more to know that her last days were
+   bright in honour, and cheered by the attachment of old friends worthy
+   to pay the duty she deserved.  Above all, it is consoling to know that
+   she who so long outlived her only child was blessed with the
+   unremitting and tender care of her grand-daughter.  She died on the
+   16th of May, 1860.
+
+   'The portrait of Lady Byron as she was at the time of her marriage is
+   probably remembered by some of my readers.  It is very engaging.  Her
+   countenance afterwards became much worn; but its expression of
+   thoughtfulness and composure was very interesting.  Her handwriting
+   accorded well with the character of her mind.  It was clear, elegant,
+   and womanly.  Her manners differed with circumstances.  Her shrinking
+   sensitiveness might embarrass one visitor; while another would be
+   charmed with her easy, significant, and vivacious conversation.  It
+   depended much on whom she talked with.  The abiding certainty was,
+   that she had strength for the hardest of human trials, and the
+   composure which belongs to strength.  For the rest, it is enough to
+   point to her deeds, and to the mourning of her friends round the chasm
+   which her departure has made in their life, and in the society in
+   which it is spent.  All that could be done in the way of personal love
+   and honour was done while she lived: it only remains now to see that
+   her name and fame are permitted to shine forth at last in their proper
+   light.'
+
+We have simply to ask the reader whether a life like this was not the
+best, the noblest answer that a woman could make to a doubting world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.  THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON'S GRAVE.
+
+
+We have now brought the review of the antagonism against Lady Byron down
+to the period of her death.  During all this time, let the candid reader
+ask himself which of these two parties seems to be plotting against the
+other.
+
+Which has been active, aggressive, unscrupulous? which has been silent,
+quiet, unoffending?  Which of the two has laboured to make a party, and
+to make that party active, watchful, enthusiastic?
+
+Have we not proved that Lady Byron remained perfectly silent during Lord
+Byron's life, patiently looking out from her retirement to see the waves
+of popular sympathy, that once bore her up, day by day retreating, while
+his accusations against her were resounding in his poems over the whole
+earth?  And after Lord Byron's death, when all the world with one consent
+began to give their memorials of him, and made it appear, by their
+various 'recollections of conversations,' how incessantly he had obtruded
+his own version of the separation upon every listener, did she manifest
+any similar eagerness?
+
+Lady Byron had seen the 'Blackwood' coming forward, on the first
+appearance of 'Don Juan,' to rebuke the cowardly lampoon in words
+eloquent with all the unperverted vigour of an honest Englishman.  Under
+the power of the great conspirator, she had seen that 'Blackwood' become
+the very eager recipient and chief reporter of the stories against her,
+and the blind admirer of her adversary.
+
+All this time, she lost sympathy daily by being silent.  The world will
+embrace those who court it; it will patronise those who seek its favour;
+it will make parties for those who seek to make parties: but for the
+often accused who do not speak, who make no confidants and no parties,
+the world soon loses sympathy.
+
+When at last she spoke, Christopher North says 'she astonished the
+world.'  Calm, clear, courageous, exact as to time, date, and
+circumstance, was that first testimony, backed by the equally clear
+testimony of Dr. Lushington.
+
+It showed that her secret had been kept even from her parents.  In words
+precise, firm, and fearless, she says, 'If these statements on which Dr.
+Lushington and Sir Samuel Romilly formed their opinion were false, the
+responsibility and the odium should rest with me only.'  Christopher
+North did not pretend to disbelieve this statement.  He breathed not a
+doubt of Lady Byron's word.  He spoke of the crime indicated, as one
+which might have been foul as the grave's corruption, unforgivable as the
+sin against the Holy Ghost.  He rebuked the wife for bearing this
+testimony, even to save the memory of her dead father and mother, and, in
+the same breath, declared that she ought now to go farther, and speak
+fully the one awful word, and then--'a mitigated sentence, or eternal
+silence!'
+
+But Lady Byron took no counsel with the world, nor with the literary men
+of her age.  One knight, with some small remnant of England's old
+chivalry, set lance in rest for her: she saw him beaten back unhorsed,
+rolled in the dust, and ingloriously vanquished, and perceived that
+henceforth nothing but injury could come to any one who attempted to
+speak for her.
+
+She turned from the judgments of man and the fond and natural hopes of
+human nature, to lose herself in sacred ministries to the downcast and
+suffering.  What nobler record for woman could there be than that which
+Miss Martineau has given?
+
+Particularly to be noted in Lady Byron was her peculiar interest in
+reclaiming fallen women.  Among her letters to Mrs. Prof. Follen, of
+Cambridge, was one addressed to a society of ladies who had undertaken
+this difficult work.  It was full of heavenly wisdom and of a large and
+tolerant charity.  Fenelon truly says, it is only perfection that can
+tolerate imperfection; and the very purity of Lady Byron's nature made
+her most forbearing and most tender towards the weak and the guilty.  This
+letter, with all the rest of Lady Byron's, was returned to the hands of
+her executors after her death.  Its publication would greatly assist the
+world in understanding the peculiarities of its writer's character.
+
+Lady Byron passed to a higher life in 1860. {105}  After her death, I
+looked for the publication of her Memoir and Letters as the event that
+should give her the same opportunity of being known and judged by her
+life and writings that had been so freely accorded to Lord Byron.
+
+She was, in her husband's estimation, a woman of genius.  She was the
+friend of many of the first men and women of her times, and corresponded
+with them on topics of literature, morals, religion, and, above all, on
+the benevolent and philanthropic movements of the day, whose principles
+she had studied with acute observation, and in connection with which she
+had acquired a large experience.
+
+The knowledge of her, necessarily diffused by such a series of letters,
+would have created in America a comprehension of her character, of itself
+sufficient to wither a thousand slanders.
+
+Such a Memoir was contemplated.  Lady Byron's letters to Mrs. Follen were
+asked for from Boston; and I was applied to by a person in England, who I
+have recently learned is one of the existing trustees of Lady Byron's
+papers, to furnish copies of her letters to me for the purpose of a
+Memoir.  Before I had time to have copies made, another letter came,
+stating that the trustees had concluded that it was best not to publish
+any Memoir of Lady Byron at all.
+
+This left the character of Lady Byron in our American world precisely
+where the slanders of her husband, the literature of the Noctes Club, and
+the unanimous verdict of May Fair as recorded by 'Blackwood,' had placed
+it.
+
+True, Lady Byron had nobly and quietly lived down these slanders in
+England by deeds that made her name revered as a saint among all those
+who valued saintliness.
+
+But in France and Italy, and in these United States, I have had abundant
+opportunity to know that Lady Byron stood judged and condemned on the
+testimony of her brilliant husband, and that the feeling against her had
+a vivacity and intensity not to be overcome by mere allusions to a
+virtuous life in distant England.
+
+This is strikingly shown by one fact.  In the American edition of Moore's
+'Life of Byron,' by Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, Philadelphia,
+1869, which I have been consulting, Lady Byron's statement, which is
+found in the Appendix of Murray's standard edition, is entirely omitted.
+Every other paper is carefully preserved.  This one incident showed how
+the tide of sympathy was setting in this New World.  Of course, there is
+no stronger power than a virtuous life; but, for a virtuous life to bear
+testimony to the world, its details must be told, so that the world may
+know them.
+
+Suppose the memoirs of Clarkson and Wilberforce had been suppressed after
+their death, how soon might the coming tide have wiped out the record of
+their bravery and philanthropy!  Suppose the lives of Francis Xavier and
+Henry Martyn had never been written, and we had lost the remembrance of
+what holy men could do and dare in the divine enthusiasm of Christian
+faith!  Suppose we had no Fenelon, no Book of Martyrs!
+
+Would there not be an outcry through all the literary and artistic world
+if a perfect statue were allowed to remain buried for ever because some
+painful individual history was connected with its burial and its
+recovery?  But is not a noble life a greater treasure to mankind than any
+work of art?
+
+We have heard much mourning over the burned Autobiography of Lord Byron,
+and seen it treated of in a magazine as 'the lost chapter in history.'
+The lost chapter in history is Lady Byron's Autobiography in her life and
+letters; and the suppression of them is the root of this whole mischief.
+
+We do not in this intend to censure the parties who came to this
+decision.
+
+The descendants of Lady Byron revere her memory, as they have every
+reason to do.  That it was their desire to have a Memoir of her
+published, I have been informed by an individual of the highest character
+in England, who obtained the information directly from Lady Byron's
+grandchildren.
+
+But the trustees in whose care the papers were placed drew back on
+examination of them, and declared, that, as Lady Byron's papers could not
+be fully published, they should regret anything that should call public
+attention once more to the discussion of her history.
+
+Reviewing this long history of the way in which the literary world had
+treated Lady Byron, we cannot wonder that her friends should have doubted
+whether there was left on earth any justice, or sense that anything is
+due to woman as a human being with human rights.  Evidently this lesson
+had taken from them all faith in the moral sense of the world.  Rather
+than re-awaken the discussion, so unsparing, so painful, and so
+indelicate, which had been carried on so many years around that loved
+form, now sanctified by death, they sacrificed the dear pleasure of the
+memorials, and the interests of mankind, who have an indefeasible right
+to all the help that can be got from the truth of history as to the
+living power of virtue, and the reality of that great victory that
+overcometh the world.
+
+There are thousands of poor victims suffering in sadness, discouragement,
+and poverty; heart-broken wives of brutal, drunken husbands; women
+enduring nameless wrongs and horrors which the delicacy of their sex
+forbids them to utter,--to whom the lovely letters lying hidden away
+under those seals might bring courage and hope from springs not of this
+world.
+
+But though the friends of Lady Byron, perhaps from despair of their kind,
+from weariness of the utter injustice done her, wished to cherish her
+name in silence, and to confine the story of her virtues to that circle
+who knew her too well to ask a proof, or utter a doubt, the partisans of
+Lord Byron were embarrassed with no such scruple.
+
+Lord Byron had artfully contrived during his life to place his wife in
+such an antagonistic position with regard to himself, that his intimate
+friends were forced to believe that one of the two had deliberately and
+wantonly injured the other.  The published statement of Lady Byron
+contradicted boldly and point-blank all the statement of her husband
+concerning the separation; so that, unless she was convicted as a false
+witness, he certainly was.
+
+The best evidence of this is Christopher North's own shocked, astonished
+statement, and the words of the Noctes Club.
+
+The noble life that Lady Byron lived after this hushed every voice, and
+silenced even the most desperate calumny, while she was in the world.  In
+the face of Lady Byron as the world saw her, of what use was the talk of
+Clytemnestra, and the assertion that she had been a mean, deceitful
+conspirator against her husband's honour in life, and stabbed his memory
+after death?
+
+But when she was in her grave, when her voice and presence and good deeds
+no more spoke for her, and a new generation was growing up that knew her
+not; then was the time selected to revive the assault on her memory, and
+to say over her grave what none would ever have dared to say of her while
+living.
+
+During these last two years, I have been gradually awakening to the
+evidence of a new crusade against the memory of Lady Byron, which
+respected no sanctity,--not even that last and most awful one of death.
+
+Nine years after her death, when it was fully understood that no story on
+her side or that of her friends was to be forthcoming, then her
+calumniators raked out from the ashes of her husband's sepulchre all his
+bitter charges, to state them over in even stronger and more indecent
+forms.
+
+There seems to be reason to think that the materials supplied by Lord
+Byron for such a campaign yet exist in society.
+
+To 'The Noctes' of November 1824, there is the following note apropos to
+a discussion of the Byron question:--
+
+   'Byron's Memoirs, given by him to Moore, were burned, as everybody
+   knows.  But, before this, Moore had lent them to several persons.  Mrs.
+   Home Purvis, afterwards Viscountess of Canterbury, is known to have
+   sat up all one night, in which, aided by her daughter, she had a copy
+   made.  I have the strongest reason for believing that one other person
+   made a copy; for the description of the first twenty-four hours after
+   the marriage ceremonial has been in my hands.  Not until after the
+   death of Lady Byron, and Hobhouse, who was the poet's literary
+   executor, can the poet's Autobiography see the light; but I am certain
+   it will be published.'
+
+Thus speaks Mackenzie in a note to a volume of 'The Noctes,' published in
+America in 1854.  Lady Byron died in 1860.
+
+Nine years after Lady Byron's death, when it was ascertained that her
+story was not to see the light, when there were no means of judging her
+character by her own writings, commenced a well-planned set of operations
+to turn the public attention once more to Lord Byron, and to represent
+him as an injured man, whose testimony had been unjustly suppressed.
+
+It was quite possible, supposing copies of the Autobiography to exist,
+that this might occasion a call from the generation of to-day, in answer
+to which the suppressed work might appear.  This was a rather delicate
+operation to commence; but the instrument was not wanting.  It was
+necessary that the subject should be first opened by some irresponsible
+party, whom more powerful parties might, as by accident, recognise and
+patronise, and on whose weakness they might build something stronger.
+
+Just such an instrument was to be found in Paris.  The mistress of Lord
+Byron could easily be stirred up and flattered to come before the world
+with a book which should re-open the whole controversy; and she proved a
+facile tool.  At first, the work appeared prudently in French, and was
+called 'Lord Byron juge par les Temoins de sa Vie,' and was rather a
+failure.  Then it was translated into English, and published by Bentley.
+
+The book was inartistic, and helplessly, childishly stupid as to any
+literary merits,--a mere mass of gossip and twaddle; but after all, when
+one remembers the taste of the thousands of circulating-library readers,
+it must not be considered the less likely to be widely read on that
+account.  It is only once in a century that a writer of real genius has
+the art to tell his story so as to take both the cultivated few and the
+average many.  De Foe and John Bunyan are almost the only examples.  But
+there is a certain class of reading that sells and spreads, and exerts a
+vast influence, which the upper circles of literature despise too much
+ever to fairly estimate its power.
+
+However, the Guiccioli book did not want for patrons in the high places
+of literature.  The 'Blackwood'--the old classic magazine of England; the
+defender of conservatism and aristocracy; the paper of Lockhart, Wilson,
+Hogg, Walter Scott, and a host of departed grandeurs--was deputed to
+usher into the world this book, and to recommend it and its author to the
+Christian public of the nineteenth century.
+
+The following is the manner in which 'Blackwood' calls attention to it:--
+
+   'One of the most beautiful of the songs of Beranger is that addressed
+   to his Lisette, in which he pictures her, in old age, narrating to a
+   younger generation the loves of their youth; decking his portrait with
+   flowers at each returning spring, and reciting the verses that had
+   been inspired by her vanished charms:--
+
+   'Lorsque les yeux chercheront sous vos rides
+   Les traits charmants qui m'auront inspire,
+   Des doux recits les jeunes gens avides,
+   Diront: Quel fut cet ami tant pleure?
+   De men amour peignez, s'il est possible,
+   Vardeur, l'ivresse, et meme les soupcons,
+   Et bonne vieille, an coin d'un feu paisible
+   De votre ami repetez les chansons.
+   "On vous dira: Savait-il etre aimable?
+   Et sans rougir vous direz: Je l'aimais.
+   D'un trait mechant se montra-t-il capable?
+   Avec orgueil vous repondrez: Jamais!'"
+
+   'This charming picture,' 'Blackwood' goes on to say, 'has been
+   realised in the case of a poet greater than Beranger, and by a
+   mistress more famous than Lisette.  The Countess Guiccioli has at
+   length given to the world her "Recollections of Lord Byron."  The book
+   first appeared in France under the title of "Lord Byron juge par les
+   Temoins de sa Vie," without the name of the countess.  A more
+   unfortunate designation could hardly have been selected.  The
+   "witnesses of his life" told us nothing but what had been told before
+   over and over again; and the uniform and exaggerated tone of eulogy
+   which pervaded the whole book was fatal to any claim on the part of
+   the writer to be considered an impartial judge of the wonderfully
+   mixed character of Byron.
+
+   'When, however, the book is regarded as the avowed production of the
+   Countess Guiccioli, it derives value and interest from its very
+   faults.  {113}  There is something inexpressibly touching in the
+   picture of the old lady calling up the phantoms of half a century ago;
+   not faded and stricken by the hand of time, but brilliant and gorgeous
+   as they were when Byron, in his manly prime of genius and beauty,
+   first flashed upon her enraptured sight, and she gave her whole soul
+   up to an absorbing passion, the embers of which still glow in her
+   heart.
+
+   'To her there has been no change, no decay.  The god whom she
+   worshipped with all the ardour of her Italian nature at seventeen is
+   still the "Pythian of the age" to her at seventy.  To try such a book
+   by the ordinary canons of criticism would be as absurd as to arraign
+   the authoress before a jury of British matrons, or to prefer a bill of
+   indictment against the Sultan for bigamy to a Middlesex grand jury.'
+
+This, then, is the introduction which one of the oldest and most
+classical periodicals of Great Britain gives to a very stupid book,
+simply because it was written by Lord Byron's mistress.  That fact, we
+are assured, lends grace even to its faults.
+
+Having brought the authoress upon the stage, the review now goes on to
+define her position, and assure the Christian world that
+
+   'The Countess Guiccioli was the daughter of an impoverished noble.  At
+   the age of sixteen, she was taken from a convent, and sold as third
+   wife to the Count Guiccioli, who was old, rich, and profligate.  A
+   fouler prostitution never profaned the name of marriage.  A short time
+   afterwards, she accidentally met Lord Byron.  Outraged and rebellious
+   nature vindicated itself in the deep and devoted passion with which he
+   inspired her.  With the full assent of husband, father, and brother,
+   and in compliance with the usages of Italian society, he was shortly
+   afterwards installed in the office, and invested with all the
+   privileges, of her "Cavalier Servente."'
+
+It has been asserted that the Marquis de Boissy, the late husband of this
+Guiccioli lady, was in the habit of introducing her in fashionable
+circles as 'the Marquise de Boissy, my wife, formerly mistress to Lord
+Byron'!  We do not give the story as a verity; yet, in the review of this
+whole history, we may be pardoned for thinking it quite possible.
+
+The mistress, being thus vouched for and presented as worthy of sympathy
+and attention by one of the oldest and most classic organs of English
+literature, may now proceed in her work of glorifying the popular idol,
+and casting abuse on the grave of the dead wife.
+
+Her attacks on Lady Byron are, to be sure, less skilful and adroit than
+those of Lord Byron.  They want his literary polish and tact; but what of
+that?  'Blackwood' assures us that even the faults of manner derive a
+peculiar grace from the fact that the narrator is Lord Byron's mistress;
+and so we suppose the literary world must find grace in things like
+this:--
+
+   'She has been called, after his words, the moral Clytemnestra of her
+   husband.  Such a surname is severe: but the repugnance we feel to
+   condemning a woman cannot prevent our listening to the voice of
+   justice, which tells us that the comparison is still in favour of the
+   guilty one of antiquity; for she, driven to crime by fierce passion
+   overpowering reason, at least only deprived her husband of physical
+   life, and, in committing the deed, exposed herself to all its
+   consequences; while Lady Byron left her husband at the very moment
+   that she saw him struggling amid a thousand shoals in the stormy sea
+   of embarrassments created by his marriage, and precisely when he more
+   than ever required a friendly, tender, and indulgent hand to save him.
+
+   'Besides, she shut herself up in silence a thousand times more cruel
+   than Clytemnestra's poniard: that only killed the body; whereas Lady
+   Byron's silence was destined to kill the soul,--and such a
+   soul!--leaving the door open to calumny, and making it to be supposed
+   that her silence was magnanimity destined to cover over frightful
+   wrongs, perhaps even depravity.  In vain did he, feeling his
+   conscience at ease, implore some inquiry and examination.  She
+   refused; and the only favour she granted was to send him, one fine
+   day, two persons to see whether he were not mad.
+
+   'And, why, then, had she believed him mad?  Because she, a methodical,
+   inflexible woman, with that unbendingness which a profound moralist
+   calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul, because she
+   could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits different to
+   those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life.  Not to be
+   hungry when she was; not to sleep at night, but to write while she was
+   sleeping, and to sleep when she was up; in short, to gratify the
+   requirements of material and intellectual life at hours different to
+   hers,--all that was not merely annoying for her, but it must be
+   madness; or, if not, it betokened depravity that she could neither
+   submit to nor tolerate without perilling her own morality.
+
+   'Such was the grand secret of the cruel silence which exposed Lord
+   Byron to the most malignant interpretations, to all the calumny and
+   revenge of his enemies.
+
+   'She was, perhaps, the only woman in the world so strangely
+   organised,--the only one, perhaps, capable of not feeling happy and
+   proud at belonging to a man superior to the rest of humanity; and
+   fatally was it decreed that this woman alone of her species should be
+   Lord Byron's wife!'
+
+In a note is added,--
+
+   'If an imaginary fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy, may be her
+   excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her
+   silence?  Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons
+   which kill at once, and defy all remedies; thus insuring the culprit's
+   safety.  This silence it is which will ever be her crime; for by it
+   she poisoned the life of her husband.'
+
+The book has several chapters devoted to Lord Byron's peculiar virtues;
+and under the one devoted to magnanimity and heroism, his forgiving
+disposition receives special attention.  The climax of all is stated to
+be that he forgave Lady Byron.  All the world knew that, since he had
+declared this fact in a very noisy and impassioned manner in the fourth
+canto of 'Childe Harold,' together with a statement of the wrongs which
+he forgave; but the Guiccioli thinks his virtue, at this period, has not
+been enough appreciated.  In her view, it rose to the sublime.  She says
+of Lady Byron,--
+
+   'An absolute moral monstrosity, an anomaly in the history of types of
+   female hideousness, had succeeded in showing itself in the light of
+   magnanimity.  But false as was this high quality in Lady Byron, so did
+   it shine out in him true and admirable.  The position in which Lady
+   Byron had placed him, and where she continued to keep him by her
+   harshness, silence, and strange refusals, was one of those which cause
+   such suffering, that the highest degree of self-control seldom
+   suffices to quiet the promptings of human weakness, and to cause
+   persons of even slight sensibility to preserve moderation.  Yet, with
+   his sensibility and the knowledge of his worth, how did he act? what
+   did he say?  I will not speak of his "farewell;" of the care he took
+   to shield her from blame by throwing it on others, by taking much too
+   large a share to himself.'
+
+With like vivacity and earnestness does the narrator now proceed to make
+an incarnate angel of her subject by the simple process of denying
+everything that he himself ever confessed,--everything that has ever been
+confessed in regard to him by his best friends.  He has been in the world
+as an angel unawares from his cradle.  His guardian did not properly
+appreciate him, and is consequently mentioned as that wicked Lord
+Carlisle.  Thomas Moore is never to be sufficiently condemned for the
+facts told in his biography.  Byron's own frank and lawless admissions of
+evil are set down to a peculiar inability he had for speaking the truth
+about himself,--sometimes about his near relations; all which does not in
+the least discourage the authoress from giving a separate chapter on
+'Lord Byron's Love of Truth.'
+
+In the matter of his relations with women, she complacently repeats (what
+sounds rather oddly as coming from her) Lord Byron's own assurance, that
+he never seduced a woman; and also the equally convincing statement, that
+he had told her (the Guiccioli) that his married fidelity to his wife was
+perfect.  She discusses Moore's account of the mistress in boy's clothes
+who used to share Byron's apartments in college, and ride with him to
+races, and whom he presented to ladies as his brother.
+
+She has her own view of this matter.  The disguised boy was a lady of
+rank and fashion, who sought Lord Byron's chambers, as, we are informed,
+noble ladies everywhere, both in Italy and England, were constantly in
+the habit of doing; throwing themselves at his feet, and imploring
+permission to become his handmaids.
+
+In the authoress's own words, 'Feminine overtures still continued to be
+made to Lord Byron; but the fumes of incense never hid from his sight his
+IDEAL.'  We are told that in the case of these poor ladies, generally
+'disenchantment took place on his side without a corresponding result on
+the other: THENCE many heart-breakings.'  Nevertheless, we are informed
+that there followed the indiscretions of these ladies 'none of those
+proceedings that the world readily forgives, but which his feelings as a
+man of honour would have condemned.'
+
+As to drunkenness, and all that, we are informed he was an anchorite.
+Pages are given to an account of the biscuits and soda-water that on this
+and that occasion were found to be the sole means of sustenance to this
+ethereal creature.
+
+As to the story of using his wife's money, the lady gives, directly in
+the face of his own Letters and Journal, the same account given before by
+Medwin, and which caused such merriment when talked over in the Noctes
+Club,--that he had with her only a marriage portion of 10,000 pounds; and
+that, on the separation, he not only paid it back, but doubled it. {119}
+
+So on the authoress goes, sowing right and left the most transparent
+absurdities and misstatements with what Carlyle well calls 'a composed
+stupidity, and a cheerful infinitude of ignorance.'  Who should know, if
+not she, to be sure?  Had not Byron told her all about it? and was not
+his family motto Crede Byron?
+
+The 'Blackwood,' having a dim suspicion that this confused style of
+attack and defence in reference to the two parties under consideration
+may not have great weight, itself proceeds to make the book an occasion
+for re-opening the controversy of Lord Byron with his wife.
+
+The rest of the review devoted to a powerful attack on Lady Byron's
+character, the most fearful attack on the memory of a dead woman we have
+ever seen made by living man.  The author proceeds, like a lawyer, to
+gather up, arrange, and restate, in a most workmanlike manner, the
+confused accusations of the book.
+
+Anticipating the objection, that such a re-opening of the inquiry was a
+violation of the privacy due to womanhood and to the feelings of a
+surviving family, he says, that though marriage usually is a private
+matter which the world has no right to intermeddle with or discuss, yet--
+
+   'Lord Byron's was an exceptional case.  It is not too much to say,
+   that, had his marriage been a happy one, the course of events of the
+   present century might have been materially changed; that the genius
+   which poured itself forth in "Don Juan" and "Cain" might have flowed
+   in far different channels; that the ardent love of freedom which sent
+   him to perish at six and thirty at Missolonghi might have inspired a
+   long career at home; and that we might at this moment have been
+   appealing to the counsels of his experience and wisdom at an age not
+   exceeding that which was attained by Wellington, Lyndhurst, and
+   Brougham.
+
+   'Whether the world would have been a gainer or a loser by the exchange
+   is a question which every man must answer for himself, according to
+   his own tastes and opinions; but the possibility of such a change in
+   the course of events warrants us in treating what would otherwise be a
+   strictly private matter as one of public interest.
+
+   'More than half a century has elapsed, the actors have departed from
+   the stage, the curtain has fallen; and whether it will ever again be
+   raised so as to reveal the real facts of the drama, may, as we have
+   already observed, be well doubted.  But the time has arrived when we
+   may fairly gather up the fragments of evidence, clear them as far as
+   possible from the incrustations of passion, prejudice, and malice, and
+   place them in such order, as, if possible, to enable us to arrive at
+   some probable conjecture as to what the skeleton of the drama
+   originally was.'
+
+Here the writer proceeds to put together all the facts of Lady Byron's
+case, just as an adverse lawyer would put them as against her, and for
+her husband.  The plea is made vigorously and ably, and with an air of
+indignant severity, as of an honest advocate who is thoroughly convinced
+that he is pleading the cause of a wronged man who has been ruined in
+name, shipwrecked in life, and driven to an early grave, by the arts of a
+bad woman,--a woman all the more horrible that her malice was disguised
+under the cloak of religion.
+
+Having made an able statement of facts, adroitly leaving out ONE, {121}
+of which he could not have been ignorant had he studied the case
+carefully enough to know all the others, he proceeds to sum up against
+the criminal thus:--
+
+   'We would deal tenderly with the memory of Lady Byron.  Few women have
+   been juster objects of compassion.  It would seem as if Nature and
+   Fortune had vied with each other which should be most lavish of her
+   gifts, and yet that some malignant power had rendered all their bounty
+   of no effect.  Rank, beauty, wealth, and mental powers of no common
+   order, were hers; yet they were of no avail to secure common
+   happiness.  The spoilt child of seclusion, restraint, and parental
+   idolatry, a fate (alike evil for both) cast her into the arms of the
+   spoilt child of genius, passion, and the world.  What real or fancied
+   wrongs she suffered, we may never know; but those which she inflicted
+   are sufficiently apparent.
+
+   'It is said that there are some poisons so subtle that they will
+   destroy life, and yet leave no trace of their action.  The murderer
+   who uses them may escape the vengeance of the law; but he is not the
+   less guilty.  So the slanderer who makes no charge; who deals in hints
+   and insinuations: who knows melancholy facts he would not willingly
+   divulge,--things too painful to state; who forbears, expresses pity,
+   sometimes even affection, for his victim, shrugs his shoulders, looks
+   with
+
+      "The significant eye,
+   Which learns to lie with silence,--"
+
+   is far more guilty than he who tells the bold falsehood which may be
+   met and answered, and who braves the punishment which must follow upon
+   detection.
+
+   'Lady Byron has been called
+
+      "The moral Clytemnestra of her lord."
+
+   The "moral Brinvilliers" would have been a truer designation.
+
+   'The conclusion at which we arrive is, that there is no proof whatever
+   that Lord Byron was guilty of any act that need have caused a
+   separation, or prevented a re-union, and that the imputations upon him
+   rest on the vaguest conjecture; that whatever real or fancied wrongs
+   Lady Byron may have endured are shrouded in an impenetrable mist of
+   her own creation,--a poisonous miasma in which she enveloped the
+   character of her husband, raised by her breath, and which her breath
+   only could have dispersed.
+
+      "She dies and makes no sign.  O God! forgive her."'
+
+As we have been obliged to review accusations on Lady Byron founded on
+old Greek tragedy, so now we are forced to abridge a passage from a
+modern conversations-lexicon, that we may understand what sort of
+comparisons are deemed in good taste in a conservative English review,
+when speaking of ladies of rank in their graves.
+
+Under the article 'Brinvilliers,' we find as follows:--
+
+   MARGUERITE D'AUBRAI, MARCHIONESS OF BRINVILLIERS.--The singular
+   atrocity of this woman gives her a sort of infamous claim to notice.
+   She was born in Paris in 1651; being daughter of D'Aubrai, lieutenant-
+   civil of Paris, who married her to the Marquis of Brinvilliers.
+   Although possessed of attractions to captivate lovers, she was for
+   some time much attached to her husband, but at length became madly in
+   love with a Gascon officer.  Her father imprisoned the officer in the
+   Bastille; and, while there, he learned the art of compounding subtle
+   and most mortal poisons; and, when he was released, he taught it to
+   the lady, who exercised it with such success, that, in one year, her
+   father, sister, and two brothers became her victims.  She professed
+   the utmost tenderness for her victims, and nursed them assiduously.  On
+   her father she is said to have made eight attempts before she
+   succeeded.  She was very religious, and devoted to works of charity;
+   and visited the hospitals a great deal, where it is said she tried her
+   poisons on the sick.'
+
+People have made loud outcries lately, both in America and England, about
+violating the repose of the dead.  We should like to know what they call
+this.  Is this, then, what they mean by respecting the dead?
+
+Let any man imagine a leading review coming out with language equally
+brutal about his own mother, or any dear and revered friend.
+
+Men of America, men of England, what do you think of this?
+
+When Lady Byron was publicly branded with the names of the foulest
+ancient and foulest modern assassins, and Lord Byron's mistress was
+publicly taken by the hand, and encouraged to go on and prosper in her
+slanders, by one of the oldest and most influential British reviews, what
+was said and what was done in England?
+
+That is a question we should be glad to have answered.  Nothing was done
+that ever reached us across the water.
+
+And why was nothing done?  Is this language of a kind to be passed over
+in silence?
+
+Was it no offence to the house of Wentworth to attack the pure character
+of its late venerable head, and to brand her in her sacred grave with the
+name of one of the vilest of criminals?
+
+Might there not properly have been an indignant protest of family
+solicitors against this insult to the person and character of the
+Baroness Wentworth?
+
+If virtue went for nothing, benevolence for nothing, a long life of
+service to humanity for nothing, one would at least have thought, that,
+in aristocratic countries, rank might have had its rights to decent
+consideration, and its guardians to rebuke the violation of those rights.
+
+We Americans understand little of the advantages of rank; but we did
+understand that it secured certain decorums to people, both while living
+and when in their graves.  From Lady Byron's whole history, in life and
+in death, it would appear that we were mistaken.
+
+What a life was hers!  Was ever a woman more evidently desirous of the
+delicate and secluded privileges of womanhood, of the sacredness of
+individual privacy?  Was ever a woman so rudely dragged forth, and
+exposed to the hardened, vulgar, and unfeeling gaze of mere
+curiosity?--her maiden secrets of love thrown open to be handled by
+roues; the sanctities of her marriage-chamber desecrated by leering
+satyrs; her parents and best friends traduced and slandered, till one
+indignant public protest was extorted from her, as by the rack,--a
+protest which seems yet to quiver in every word with the indignation of
+outraged womanly delicacy!
+
+Then followed coarse blame and coarser comment,--blame for speaking at
+all, and blame for not speaking more.  One manly voice, raised for her in
+honourable protest, was silenced and overborne by the universal roar of
+ridicule and reprobation; and henceforth what refuge?  Only this
+remained: 'Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the
+keeping of their souls to him as to a faithful Creator.'
+
+Lady Byron turned to this refuge in silence, and filled up her life with
+a noble record of charities and humanities.  So pure was she, so
+childlike, so artless, so loving, that those who knew her best, feel, to
+this day, that a memorial of her is like the relic of a saint.  And could
+not all this preserve her grave from insult?  O England, England!
+
+I speak in sorrow of heart to those who must have known, loved, and
+revered Lady Byron, and ask them, Of what were you thinking when you
+allowed a paper of so established literary rank as the 'Blackwood,' to
+present and earnestly recommend to our New World such a compendium of
+lies as the Guiccioli book?
+
+Is the great English-speaking community, whose waves toss from Maine to
+California, and whose literature is yet to come back in a thousand voices
+to you, a thing to be so despised?
+
+If, as the solicitors of the Wentworth family observe, you might be
+entitled to treat with silent contempt the slanders of a mistress against
+a wife, was it safe to treat with equal contempt the indorsement and
+recommendation of those slanders by one of your oldest and most powerful
+literary authorities?
+
+No European magazine has ever had the weight and circulation in America
+that the 'Blackwood' has held.  In the days of my youth, when New England
+was a comparatively secluded section of the earth, the wit and genius of
+the 'Noctes Ambrosianae' were in the mouths of men and maidens, even in
+our most quiet mountain-towns.  There, years ago, we saw all Lady Byron's
+private affairs discussed, and felt the weight of Christopher North's
+decisions against her.  Shelton Mackenzie, in his American edition,
+speaks of the American circulation of 'Blackwood' being greater than that
+in England. {126}  It was and is now reprinted monthly; and, besides
+that, 'Littell's Magazine' reproduces all its striking articles, and they
+come with the weight of long established position.  From the very fact
+that it has long been considered the Tory organ, and the supporter of
+aristocratic orders, all its admissions against the character of
+individuals in the privileged classes have a double force.
+
+When 'Blackwood,' therefore, boldly denounces a lady of high rank as a
+modern Brinvilliers, and no sensation is produced, and no remonstrance
+follows, what can people in the New World suppose, but that Lady Byron's
+character was a point entirely given up; that her depravity was so well
+established and so fully conceded, that nothing was to be said, and that
+even the defenders of aristocracy were forced to admit it?
+
+I have been blamed for speaking on this subject without consulting Lady
+Byron's friends, trustees, and family.  More than ten years had elapsed
+since I had had any intercourse with England, and I knew none of them.
+How was I to know that any of them were living?  I was astonished to
+learn, for the first time, by the solicitors' letters, that there were
+trustees, who held in their hands all Lady Byron's carefully prepared
+proofs and documents, by which this falsehood might immediately have been
+refuted.
+
+If they had spoken, they might have saved all this confusion.  Even if
+bound by restrictions for a certain period of time, they still might have
+called on a Christian public to frown down such a cruel and indecent
+attack on the character of a noble lady who had been a benefactress to so
+many in England.  They might have stated that the means of wholly
+refuting the slanders of the 'Blackwood' were in their hands, and only
+delayed in coming forth from regard to the feelings of some in this
+generation.  Then might they not have announced her Life and Letters,
+that the public might have the same opportunity as themselves for knowing
+and judging Lady Byron by her own writings?
+
+Had this been done, I had been most happy to have remained silent.  I
+have been astonished that any one should have supposed this speaking on
+my part to be anything less than it is,--the severest act of
+self-sacrifice that one friend can perform for another, and the most
+solemn and difficult tribute to justice that a human being can be called
+upon to render.
+
+I have been informed that the course I have taken would be contrary to
+the wishes of my friend.  I think otherwise.  I know her strong sense of
+justice, and her reverence for truth.  Nothing ever moved her to speak to
+the public but an attack upon the honour of the dead.  In her statement,
+she says of her parents, 'There is no other near relative to vindicate
+their memory from insult: I am therefore compelled to break the silence I
+had hoped always to have observed.'
+
+If there was any near relative to vindicate Lady Byron's memory, I had no
+evidence of the fact; and I considered the utter silence to be strong
+evidence to the contrary.  In all the storm of obloquy and rebuke that
+has raged in consequence of my speaking, I have had two unspeakable
+sources of joy; first, that they could not touch her; and, second, that
+they could not blind the all-seeing God.  It is worth being in darkness
+to see the stars.
+
+It has been said that I have drawn on Lady Byron's name greater obloquy
+than ever before.  I deny the charge.  Nothing fouler has been asserted
+of her than the charges in the 'Blackwood,' because nothing fouler could
+be asserted.  No satyr's hoof has ever crushed this pearl deeper in the
+mire than the hoof of the 'Blackwood,' but none of them have defiled it
+or trodden it so deep that God cannot find it in the day 'when he maketh
+up his jewels.'
+
+I have another word, as an American, to say about the contempt shown to
+our great people in thus suffering the materials of history to be
+falsified to subserve the temporary purposes of family feeling in
+England.
+
+Lord Byron belongs not properly either to the Byrons or the Wentworths.
+He is not one of their family jewels to be locked up in their cases.  He
+belongs to the world for which he wrote, to which he appealed, and before
+which he dragged his reluctant, delicate wife to a publicity equal with
+his own: the world has, therefore, a right to judge him.
+
+We Americans have been made accessories, after the fact, to every insult
+and injury that Lord Byron and the literary men of his day have heaped
+upon Lady Byron.  We have been betrayed into injustice and a complicity
+with villainy.  After Lady Byron had nobly lived down slanders in
+England, and died full of years and honours, the 'Blackwood' takes
+occasion to re-open the controversy by recommending a book full of
+slanders to a rising generation who knew nothing of the past.  What was
+the consequence in America?  My attention was first called to the result,
+not by reading the 'Blackwood' article, but by finding in a popular
+monthly magazine two long articles,--the one an enthusiastic
+recommendation of the Guiccioli book, and the other a lamentation over
+the burning of the Autobiography as a lost chapter in history.
+
+Both articles represented Lady Byron as a cold, malignant, mean,
+persecuting woman, who had been her husband's ruin.  They were so full of
+falsehoods and misstatements as to astonish me.  Not long after, a
+literary friend wrote to me, 'Will you, can you, reconcile it to your
+conscience to sit still and allow that mistress so to slander that
+wife,--you, perhaps, the only one knowing the real facts, and able to set
+them forth?'
+
+Upon this, I immediately began collecting and reading the various
+articles and the book, and perceived that the public of this generation
+were in a way of having false history created, uncontradicted, under
+their own eyes.
+
+I claim for my countrymen and women, our right to true history.  For
+years, the popular literature has held up publicly before our eyes the
+facts as to this man and this woman, and called on us to praise or
+condemn.  Let us have truth when we are called on to judge.  It is our
+right.
+
+There is no conceivable obligation on a human being greater than that of
+absolute justice.  It is the deepest personal injury to an honourable
+mind to be made, through misrepresentation, an accomplice in injustice.
+When a noble name is accused, any person who possesses truth which might
+clear it, and withholds that truth, is guilty of a sin against human
+nature and the inalienable rights of justice.  I claim that I have not
+only a right, but an obligation, to bring in my solemn testimony upon
+this subject.
+
+For years and years, the silence-policy has been tried; and what has it
+brought forth?  As neither word nor deed could be proved against Lady
+Byron, her silence has been spoken of as a monstrous, unnatural crime, 'a
+poisonous miasma,' in which she enveloped the name of her husband.
+
+Very well; since silence is the crime, I thought I would tell the world
+that Lady Byron had spoken.
+
+Christopher North, years ago, when he condemned her for speaking, said
+that she should speak further,--
+
+'She should speak, or some one for her.  One word would suffice.'
+
+That one word has been spoken.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.  LADY BYRON AS I KNEW HER.
+
+
+An editorial in The London Times' of Sept. 18 says:--
+
+   'The perplexing feature in this "True Story" is, that it is impossible
+   to distinguish what part in it is the editress's, and what Lady
+   Byron's own.  We are given the impression made on Mrs. Stowe's mind by
+   Lady Byron's statements; but it would have been more satisfactory if
+   the statement itself had been reproduced as bare as possible, and been
+   left to make its own impression on the public.'
+
+In reply to this, I will say, that in my article I gave a brief synopsis
+of the subject-matter of Lady Byron's communications; and I think it must
+be quite evident to the world that the main fact on which the story turns
+was one which could not possibly be misunderstood, and the remembrance of
+which no lapse of time could ever weaken.
+
+Lady Byron's communications were made to me in language clear, precise,
+terrible; and many of her phrases and sentences I could repeat at this
+day, word for word.  But if I had reproduced them at first, as 'The
+Times' suggests, word for word, the public horror and incredulity would
+have been doubled.  It was necessary that the brutality of the story
+should, in some degree, be veiled and softened.
+
+The publication, by Lord Lindsay, of Lady Anne Barnard's communication,
+makes it now possible to tell fully, and in Lady Byron's own words,
+certain incidents that yet remain untold.  To me, who know the whole
+history, the revelations in Lady Anne's account, and the story related by
+Lady Byron, are like fragments of a dissected map: they fit together,
+piece by piece, and form one connected whole.
+
+In confirmation of the general facts of this interview, I have the
+testimony of a sister who accompanied me on this visit, and to whom,
+immediately after it, I recounted the story.
+
+Her testimony on the subject is as follows:--
+
+   'MY DEAR SISTER,--I have a perfect recollection of going with you to
+   visit Lady Byron at the time spoken of in your published article.  We
+   arrived at her house in the morning; and, after lunch, Lady Byron and
+   yourself spent the whole time till evening alone together.
+
+   'After we retired to our apartment that night, you related to me the
+   story given in your published account, though with many more
+   particulars than you have yet thought fit to give to the public.
+
+   'You stated to me that Lady Byron was strongly impressed with the idea
+   that it might be her duty to publish a statement during her lifetime,
+   and also the reasons which induced her to think so.  You appeared at
+   that time quite disposed to think that justice required this step, and
+   asked my opinion.  We passed most of the night in conversation on the
+   subject,--a conversation often resumed, from time to time, during
+   several weeks in which you were considering what opinion to give.
+
+   'I was strongly of opinion that justice required the publication of
+   the truth, but felt exceedingly averse to its being done by Lady Byron
+   herself during her own lifetime, when she personally would be subject
+   to the comments and misconceptions of motives which would certainly
+   follow such a communication.
+
+                                 'Your sister,
+
+                                       'M. F. PERKINS.'
+
+I am now about to complete the account of my conversation with Lady
+Byron; but as the credibility of a history depends greatly on the
+character of its narrator, and as especial pains have been taken to
+destroy the belief in this story by representing it to be the wanderings
+of a broken-down mind in a state of dotage and mental hallucination, I
+shall preface the narrative with some account of Lady Byron as she was
+during the time of our mutual acquaintance and friendship.
+
+This account may, perhaps, be deemed superfluous in England, where so
+many knew her; but in America, where, from Maine to California, her
+character has been discussed and traduced, it is of importance to give
+interested thousands an opportunity of learning what kind of a woman Lady
+Byron was.
+
+Her character as given by Lord Byron in his Journal, after her first
+refusal of him, is this:--
+
+   'She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled; which is
+   strange in an heiress, a girl of twenty, a peeress that is to be in
+   her own right, an only child, and a savante, who has always had her
+   own way.  She is a poetess, a mathematician, a metaphysician; yet,
+   withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension.
+   Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions and a tenth
+   of her advantages.'
+
+Such was Lady Byron at twenty.  I formed her acquaintance in the year
+1853, during my first visit in England.  I met her at a lunch-party in
+the house of one of her friends.
+
+The party had many notables; but, among them all, my attention was fixed
+principally on Lady Byron.  She was at this time sixty-one years of age,
+but still had, to a remarkable degree, that personal attraction which is
+commonly considered to belong only to youth and beauty.
+
+Her form was slight, giving an impression of fragility; her motions were
+both graceful and decided; her eyes bright, and full of interest and
+quick observation.  Her silvery-white hair seemed to lend a grace to the
+transparent purity of her complexion, and her small hands had a pearly
+whiteness.  I recollect she wore a plain widow's cap of a transparent
+material; and was dressed in some delicate shade of lavender, which
+harmonised well with her complexion.
+
+When I was introduced to her, I felt in a moment the words of her
+husband:--
+
+   'There was awe in the homage that she drew;
+   Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne.'
+
+Calm, self-poised, and thoughtful, she seemed to me rather to resemble an
+interested spectator of the world's affairs, than an actor involved in
+its trials; yet the sweetness of her smile, and a certain very delicate
+sense of humour in her remarks, made the way of acquaintance easy.
+
+Her first remarks were a little playful; but in a few moments we were
+speaking on what every one in those days was talking to me about,--the
+slavery question in America.
+
+It need not be remarked, that, when any one subject especially occupies
+the public mind, those known to be interested in it are compelled to
+listen to many weary platitudes.  Lady Byron's remarks, however, caught
+my ear and arrested my attention by their peculiar incisive quality,
+their originality, and the evidence they gave that she was as well
+informed on all our matters as the best American statesman could be.  I
+had no wearisome course to go over with her as to the difference between
+the General Government and State Governments, nor explanations of the
+United States Constitution; for she had the whole before her mind with a
+perfect clearness.  Her morality upon the slavery question, too,
+impressed me as something far higher and deeper than the common
+sentimentalism of the day.  Many of her words surprised me greatly, and
+gave me new material for thought.
+
+I found I was in company with a commanding mind, and hastened to gain
+instruction from her on another point where my interest had been aroused.
+I had recently been much excited by Kingsley's novels, 'Alton Locke' and
+'Yeast,' on the position of religious thought in England.  From these
+works I had gathered, that under the apparent placid uniformity of the
+Established Church of England, and of 'good society' as founded on it,
+there was moving a secret current of speculative enquiry, doubt, and
+dissent; but I had met, as yet, with no person among my various
+acquaintances in England who seemed either aware of this fact, or able to
+guide my mind respecting it.  The moment I mentioned the subject to Lady
+Byron, I received an answer which showed me that the whole ground was
+familiar to her, and that she was capable of giving me full information.
+She had studied with careful thoughtfulness all the social and religious
+tendencies of England during her generation.  One of her remarks has
+often since occurred to me.  Speaking of the Oxford movement, she said
+the time had come when the English Church could no longer remain as it
+was.  It must either restore the past, or create a future.  The Oxford
+movement attempted the former; and of the future she was beginning to
+speak, when our conversation was interrupted by the presentation of other
+parties.
+
+Subsequently, in reply to a note from her on some benevolent business, I
+alluded to that conversation, and expressed a wish that she would finish
+giving me her views of the religious state of England.  A portion of the
+letter that she wrote me in reply I insert, as being very characteristic
+in many respects:--
+
+   'Various causes have been assigned for the decaying state of the
+   English Church; which seems the more strange, because the clergy have
+   improved, morally and intellectually, in the last twenty years.  Then
+   why should their influence be diminished?  I think it is owing to the
+   diffusion of a spirit of free enquiry.
+
+   'Doubts have arisen in the minds of many who are unhappily bound by
+   subscription not to doubt; and, in consequence, they are habitually
+   pretending either to believe or to disbelieve.  The state of Denmark
+   cannot but be rotten, when to seem is the first object of the
+   witnesses of truth.
+
+   'They may lead better lives, and bring forward abler arguments; but
+   their efforts are paralysed by that unsoundness.  I see the High
+   Churchman professing to believe in the existence of a church, when the
+   most palpable facts must show him that no such church exists; the
+   "Low" Churchman professing to believe in exceptional interpositions
+   which his philosophy secretly questions; the "Broad" Churchman
+   professing as absolute an attachment to the Established Church as the
+   narrowest could feel, while he is preaching such principles as will at
+   last pull it down.
+
+   'I ask you, my friend, whether there would not be more faith, as well
+   as earnestness, if all would speak out.  There would be more unanimity
+   too, because they would all agree in a certain basis.  Would not a
+   wider love supersede the creed-bound charity of sects?
+
+   'I am aware that I have touched on a point of difference between us,
+   and I will not regret it; for I think the differences of mind are
+   analogous to those differences of nature, which, in the most
+   comprehensive survey, are the very elements of harmony.
+
+   'I am not at all prone to put forth my own opinions; but the tone in
+   which you have written to me claims an unusual degree of openness on
+   my part.  I look upon creeds of all kinds as chains,--far worse chains
+   than those you would break,--as the causes of much hypocrisy and
+   infidelity.  I hold it to be a sin to make a child say, "I believe."
+   Lead it to utter that belief spontaneously.  I also consider the
+   institution of an exclusive priesthood, though having been of service
+   in some respects, as retarding the progress of Christianity at
+   present.  I desire to see a lay ministry.
+
+   'I will not give you more of my heterodoxy at present: perhaps I need
+   your pardon, connected as you are with the Church, for having said so
+   much.
+
+   'There are causes of decay known to be at work in my frame, which lead
+   me to believe I may not have time to grow wiser; and I must therefore
+   leave it to others to correct the conclusions I have now formed from
+   my life's experience.  I should feel happy to discuss them personally
+   with you; for it would be soul to soul.  In that confidence I am yours
+   most truly,
+
+                                     'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+It is not necessary to prove to the reader that this letter is not in the
+style of a broken-down old woman subject to mental hallucinations.  It
+shows Lady Byron's habits of clear, searching analysis, her
+thoughtfulness, and, above all, that peculiar reverence for truth and
+sincerity which was a leading characteristic of her moral nature. {139}
+It also shows her views of the probable shortness of her stay on earth,
+derived from the opinion of physicians about her disease, which was a
+gradual ossification of the lungs.  It has been asserted that pulmonary
+diseases, while they slowly and surely sap the physical life, often
+appear to give added vigour to the play of the moral and intellectual
+powers.
+
+I parted from Lady Byron, feeling richer in that I had found one more
+pearl of great price on the shore of life.
+
+Three years after this, I visited England to obtain a copyright for the
+issue of my novel of 'Dred.'
+
+The hope of once more seeing Lady Byron was one of the brightest
+anticipations held out to me in this journey.  I found London quite
+deserted; but, hearing that Lady Byron was still in town, I sent to her,
+saying in my note, that, in case she was not well enough to call, I would
+visit her.  Her reply I give:--
+
+   'MY DEAR FRIEND,--I will be indebted to you for our meeting, as I am
+   barely able to leave my room.  It is not a time for small
+   personalities, if they could ever exist with you; and, dressed or
+   undressed, I shall hope to see you after two o'clock.
+
+                             'Yours very truly,
+
+                                     'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+I found Lady Byron in her sick-room,--that place which she made so
+different from the chamber of ordinary invalids.  Her sick-room seemed
+only a telegraphic station whence her vivid mind was flashing out all
+over the world.
+
+By her bedside stood a table covered with books, pamphlets, and files of
+letters, all arranged with exquisite order, and each expressing some of
+her varied interests.  From that sick-bed she still directed, with
+systematic care, her various works of benevolence, and watched with
+intelligent attention the course of science, literature, and religion;
+and the versatility and activity of her mind, the flow of brilliant and
+penetrating thought on all the topics of the day, gave to the
+conversations of her retired room a peculiar charm.  You forgot that she
+was an invalid; for she rarely had a word of her own personalities, and
+the charm of her conversation carried you invariably from herself to the
+subjects of which she was thinking.  All the new books, the literature of
+the hour, were lighted up by her keen, searching, yet always kindly
+criticism; and it was charming to get her fresh, genuine, clear-cut modes
+of expression, so different from the world-worn phrases of what is called
+good society.  Her opinions were always perfectly clear and positive, and
+given with the freedom of one who has long stood in a position to judge
+the world and its ways from her own standpoint.  But it was not merely in
+general literature and science that her heart lay; it was following
+always with eager interest the progress of humanity over the whole world.
+
+This was the period of the great battle for liberty in Kansas.  The
+English papers were daily filled with the thrilling particulars of that
+desperate struggle, and Lady Byron entered with heart and soul into it.
+
+Her first letter to me, at this time, is on this subject.  It was while
+'Dred' was going through the press.
+
+                                 'CAMBRIDGE TERRACE, Aug. 15.
+
+   'MY DEAR MRS. STOWE,--Messrs. Chambers liked the proposal to publish
+   the Kansas Letters.  The more the public know of these matters, the
+   better prepared they will be for your book.  The moment for its
+   publication seems well chosen.  There is always in England a floating
+   fund of sympathy for what is above the everyday sordid cares of life;
+   and these better feelings, so nobly invested for the last two years in
+   Florence Nightingale's career, are just set free.  To what will they
+   next be attached?  If you can lay hold of them, they may bring about a
+   deeper abolition than any legislative one,--the abolition of the heart-
+   heresy that man's worth comes, not from God, but from man.
+
+   'I have been obliged to give up exertion again, but hope soon to be
+   able to call and make the acquaintance of your daughters.  In case you
+   wish to consult H. Martineau's pamphlets, I send more copies.  Do not
+   think of answering: I have occupied too much of your time in reading.
+
+                             'Yours affectionately,
+
+                                  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+As soon as a copy of 'Dred' was through the press, I sent it to her,
+saying that I had been reproved by some excellent people for representing
+too faithfully the profane language of some of the wicked characters.  To
+this she sent the following reply:--
+
+   'Your book, dear Mrs. Stowe, is of the little leaven kind, and must
+   prove a great moral force; perhaps not manifestly so much as secretly.
+   And yet I can hardly conceive so much power without immediate and
+   sensible effects: only there will be a strong disposition to resist on
+   the part of all hollow-hearted professors of religion, whose
+   heathenisms you so unsparingly expose.  They have a class feeling like
+   others.
+
+   'To the young, and to those who do not reflect much on what is offered
+   to their belief, you will do great good by showing how spiritual food
+   is often adulterated.  The bread from heaven is in the same case as
+   bakers' bread.
+
+   'If there is truth in what I heard Lord Byron say, that works of
+   fiction live only by the amount of truth which they contain, your
+   story is sure of a long life.  Of the few critiques I have seen, the
+   best is in "The Examiner."  I find an obtuseness as to the spirit and
+   aim of the book, as if you had designed to make the best novel of the
+   season, or to keep up the reputation of one.  You are reproached, as
+   Walter Scott was, with too much scriptural quotation; not, that I have
+   heard, with phrases of an opposite character.
+
+   'The effects of such reading till a late hour one evening appeared to
+   influence me very singularly in a dream.  The most horrible spectres
+   presented themselves, and I woke in an agony of fear; but a faith
+   still stronger arose, and I became courageous from trust in God, and
+   felt calm.  Did you do this?  It is very insignificant among the many
+   things you certainly will do unknown to yourself.  I know more than
+   ever before how to value communion with you.  I have sent Robertson's
+   Sermons for you; and, with kind regards to your family, am
+
+                             'Yours affectionately,
+
+                                   'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+I was struck in this note with the mention of Lord Byron, and, the next
+time I saw her, alluded to it, and remarked upon the peculiar qualities
+of his mind as shown in some of his more serious conversations with Dr.
+Kennedy.
+
+She seemed pleased to continue the subject, and went on to say many
+things of his singular character and genius, more penetrating and more
+appreciative than is often met with among critics.
+
+I told her that I had been from childhood powerfully influenced by him;
+and began to tell her how much, as a child, I had been affected by the
+news of his death,--giving up all my plays, and going off to a lonely
+hillside, where I spent the afternoon thinking of him.  She interrupted
+me before I had quite finished, with a quick, impulsive movement.  'I
+know all that,' she said: 'I heard it all from Mrs. ---; and it was one
+of the things that made me wish to know you.  I think you could
+understand him.'  We talked for some time of him then; she, with her pale
+face slightly flushed, speaking, as any other great man's widow might,
+only of what was purest and best in his works, and what were his
+undeniable virtues and good traits, especially in early life.  She told
+me many pleasant little speeches made by him to herself; and, though
+there was running through all this a shade of melancholy, one could never
+have conjectured that there were under all any deeper recollections than
+the circumstances of an ordinary separation might bring.
+
+Not many days after, with the unselfishness which was so marked a trait
+with her, she chose a day when she could be out of her room, and invited
+our family party, consisting of my husband, sister, and children, to
+lunch with her.
+
+What showed itself especially in this interview was her tenderness for
+all young people.  She had often enquired after mine; asked about their
+characters, habits, and tastes; and on this occasion she found an
+opportunity to talk with each one separately, and to make them all feel
+at ease, so that they were able to talk with her.  She seemed interested
+to point out to them what they should see and study in London; and the
+charm of her conversation left on their minds an impression that
+subsequent years have never effaced.  I record this incident, because it
+shows how little Lady Byron assumed the privileges or had the character
+of an invalid absorbed in herself, and likely to brood over her own woes
+and wrongs.
+
+Here was a family of strangers stranded in a dull season in London, and
+there was no manner of obligation upon her to exert herself to show them
+attention.  Her state of health would have been an all-sufficient reason
+why she should not do it; and her doing it was simply a specimen of that
+unselfish care for others, even down to the least detail, of which her
+life was full.
+
+A little while after, at her request, I went, with my husband and son, to
+pass an evening at her house.
+
+There were a few persons present whom she thought I should be interested
+to know,--a Miss Goldsmid, daughter of Baron Goldsmid, and Lord Ockham,
+her grandson, eldest son and heir of the Earl of Lovelace, to whom she
+introduced my son.
+
+I had heard much of the eccentricities of this young nobleman, and was
+exceedingly struck with his personal appearance.  His bodily frame was of
+the order of the Farnese Hercules,--a wonderful development of physical
+and muscular strength.  His hands were those of a blacksmith.  He was
+broadly and squarely made, with a finely-shaped head, and dark eyes of
+surpassing brilliancy.  I have seldom seen a more interesting combination
+than his whole appearance presented.
+
+When all were engaged in talking, Lady Byron came and sat down by me, and
+glancing across to Lord Ockham and my son, who were talking together, she
+looked at me, and smiled.  I immediately expressed my admiration of his
+fine eyes and the intellectual expression of his countenance, and my
+wonder at the uncommon muscular development of his frame.
+
+She said that that of itself would account for many of Ockham's
+eccentricities.  He had a body that required a more vigorous animal life
+than his station gave scope for, and this had often led him to seek it in
+what the world calls low society; that he had been to sea as a sailor,
+and was now working as a mechanic on the iron work of 'The Great
+Eastern.'  He had laid aside his title, and went in daily with the other
+workmen, requesting them to call him simply Ockham.
+
+I said that there was something to my mind very fine about this, even
+though it might show some want of proper balance.
+
+She said he had noble traits, and that she felt assured he would yet
+accomplish something worthy of himself.  'The great difficulty with our
+nobility is apt to be, that they do not understand the working-classes,
+so as to feel for them properly; and Ockham is now going through an
+experience which may yet fit him to do great good when he comes to the
+peerage.  I am trying to influence him to do good among the workmen, and
+to interest himself in schools for their children.  I think,' she added,
+'I have great influence over Ockham,--the greater, perhaps, that I never
+make any claim to authority.'
+
+This conversation is very characteristic of Lady Byron as showing her
+benevolent analysis of character, and the peculiar hopefulness she always
+had in regard to the future of every one brought in connection with her.
+Her moral hopefulness was something very singular; and in this respect
+she was so different from the rest of the world, that it would be
+difficult to make her understood.  Her tolerance of wrong-doing would
+have seemed to many quite latitudinarian, and impressed them as if she
+had lost all just horror of what was morally wrong in transgression; but
+it seemed her fixed habit to see faults only as diseases and
+immaturities, and to expect them to fall away with time.
+
+She saw the germs of good in what others regarded as only evil.  She
+expected valuable results to come from what the world looked on only as
+eccentricities; {147} and she incessantly devoted herself to the task of
+guarding those whom the world condemned, and guiding them to those higher
+results of which she often thought that even their faults were prophetic.
+
+Before I quit this sketch of Lady Byron as I knew her, I will give one
+more of her letters.  My return from that visit in Europe was met by the
+sudden death of the son mentioned in the foregoing account.  At the time
+of this sorrow, Lady Byron was too unwell to write to me.  The letter
+given alludes to this event, and speaks also of two coloured persons of
+remarkable talent, in whose career in England she had taken a deep
+interest.  One of them is the 'friend' she speaks of.
+
+                                  'LONDON, Feb. 6, 1859.
+
+   DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I seem to feel our friend as a bridge, over which
+   our broken outward communication can be renewed without effort.  Why
+   broken?  The words I would have uttered at one time were like drops of
+   blood from my heart.  Now I sympathise with the calmness you have
+   gained, and can speak of your loss as I do of my own.  Loss and
+   restoration are more and more linked in my mind, but "to the present
+   live."  As long as they are in God's world they are in ours.  I ask no
+   other consolation.
+
+   'Mrs. W---'s recovery has astonished me, and her husband's prospects
+   give me great satisfaction.  They have achieved a benefit to their
+   coloured people.  She had a mission which her burning soul has worked
+   out, almost in defiance of death.  But who is "called" without being
+   "crucified," man or woman?  I know of none.
+
+   'I fear that H. Martineau was too sanguine in her persuasion that the
+   slave power had received a serious check from the ruin of so many of
+   your Mammon-worshippers.  With the return of commercial facilities,
+   that article of commerce will again find purchasers enough to raise
+   its value.  Not that way is the iniquity to be overthrown.  A deeper
+   moral earthquake is needed. {148}  We English had ours in India; and
+   though the cases are far from being alike, yet a consciousness of what
+   we ought to have been and ought to be toward the natives could not
+   have been awakened by less than the reddened waters of the Ganges.  So
+   I fear you will have to look on a day of judgment worse than has been
+   painted.
+
+   'As to all the frauds and impositions which have been disclosed by the
+   failures, what a want of the sense of personal responsibility they
+   show.  It seems to be thought that "association" will "cover a
+   multitude of sins;" as if "and Co." could enter heaven.  A firm may be
+   described as a partnership for lowering the standard of morals.  Even
+   ecclesiastical bodies are not free from the "and Co.;" very different
+   from "the goodly fellowship of the apostles."
+
+   'The better class of young gentlemen in England are seized with a
+   mediaeval mania, to which Ruskin has contributed much.  The chief
+   reason for regretting it is that taste is made to supersede
+   benevolence.  The money that would save thousands from perishing or
+   suffering must be applied to raise the Gothic edifice where their last
+   prayer may be uttered.  Charity may be dead, while Art has glorified
+   her.  This is worse than Catholicism, which cultivates heart and eye
+   together.  The first cathedral was Truth, at the beginning of the
+   fourth century, just as Christianity was exchanging a heavenly for an
+   earthly crown.  True religion may have to cast away the symbol for the
+   spirit before "the kingdom" can come.
+
+   'While I am speculating to little purpose, perhaps you are doing--what?
+   Might not a biography from your pen bring forth again some great, half-
+   obscured soul to act on the world?  Even Sir Philip Sidney ought to be
+   superseded by a still nobler type.
+
+   'This must go immediately, to be in time for the bearer, of whose
+   meeting with you I shall think as the friend of both.  May it be
+   happy!
+
+                               'Your affectionate
+
+                                       'A. I. N. B.'
+
+One letter more from Lady Byron I give,--the last I received from her:--
+
+                                   LONDON, May 3, 1859.
+
+   DEAR FRIEND,--I have found, particularly as to yourself, that, if I
+   did not answer from the first impulse, all had evaporated.  Your
+   letter came by 'The Niagara,' which brought Fanny Kemble to learn the
+   loss of her best friend, the Miss F---- whom you saw at my house.
+
+   'Her death, after an illness in which she was to the last a minister
+   of good to others, is a soul-loss to me also; and your remarks are
+   most appropriate to my feelings.  I have been taught, however, to
+   accept survivorship; even to feel it, in some cases, Heaven's best
+   blessing.
+
+   'I have an intense interest in your new novel. {149}  More power in
+   these few numbers than in any of your former writings, relating, at
+   least, to my own mind.  It would amuse you to hear my granddaughter
+   and myself attempting to foresee the future of the love-story; being,
+   for the moment, quite persuaded that James is at sea, and the minister
+   about to ruin himself.  We think that Mary will labour to be in love
+   with the self-devoted man, under her mother's influence, and from that
+   hyper-conscientiousness so common with good girls; but we don't wish
+   her to succeed.  Then what is to become of her older lover?  Time will
+   show.
+
+   'The lady you desired to introduce to me will be welcomed as of you.
+   She has been misled with respect to my having any house in Yorkshire
+   (New Leeds).  I am in London now to be of a little use to A----; not
+   ostensibly, for I can neither go out, nor give parties: but I am the
+   confidential friend to whom she likes to bring her social gatherings,
+   as she can see something of the world with others.  Age and infirmity
+   seem to be overlooked in what she calls the harmony between us,--not
+   perfect agreement of opinion (which I should regret, with almost fifty
+   years of difference), but the spirit-union: can you say what it is?
+
+   'I am interrupted by a note from Mrs. K----.  She says that she cannot
+   write of our lost friend yet, though she is less sad than she will be.
+   Mrs. F---- may like to hear of her arrival, should you be in
+   communication with our friend.  She is the type of youth in age.
+
+   'I often converse with Miss S----, a judicious friend of the W----s,
+   about what is likely to await them.  She would not succeed here as
+   well as where she was a novelty.  The character of our climate this
+   year has been injurious to the respiratory organs; but I hope still to
+   serve them.
+
+   'I have just missed Dale Owen, with whom I wished to have conversed on
+   spiritualism. {150}  Harris is lecturing here on religion.  I do not
+   hear him praised.
+
+   'People are looking for helps to believe, everywhere but in life,--in
+   music, in architecture, in antiquity, in ceremony; and upon all these
+   is written, "Thou shalt not believe."  At least, if this be faith,
+   happier the unbeliever.  I am willing to see through that materialism;
+   but, if I am to rest there, I would rend the veil.
+
+                                           'June 1.
+
+   'The day of the packet's sailing.  I shall hope to be visited by you
+   here.  The best flowers sent me have been placed in your little vases,
+   giving life to the remembrance of you, though not, like them, to pass
+   away.
+
+                               'Ever yours,
+
+                                   'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+Shortly after, I was in England again, and had one more opportunity of
+resuming our personal intercourse.  The first time that I called on Lady
+Byron, I saw her in one of those periods of utter physical exhaustion to
+which she was subject on account of the constant pressure of cares beyond
+her strength.  All who knew her will testify, that, in a state of health
+which would lead most persons to become helpless absorbents of service
+from others, she was assuming burdens, and making outlays of her vital
+powers in acts of love and service, with a generosity that often reduced
+her to utter exhaustion.  But none who knew or loved her ever
+misinterpreted the coldness of those seasons of exhaustion.  We knew that
+it was not the spirit that was chilled, but only the frail mortal
+tabernacle.  When I called on her at this time, she could not see me at
+first; and when, at last, she came, it was evident that she was in a
+state of utter prostration.  Her hands were like ice; her face was deadly
+pale; and she conversed with a restraint and difficulty which showed what
+exertion it was for her to keep up at all.  I left as soon as possible,
+with an appointment for another interview.  That interview was my last on
+earth with her, and is still beautiful in memory.  It was a long, still
+summer afternoon, spent alone with her in a garden, where we walked
+together.  She was enjoying one of those bright intervals of freedom from
+pain and languor, in which her spirits always rose so buoyant and
+youthful; and her eye brightened, and her step became elastic.
+
+One last little incident is cherished as most expressive of her.  When it
+became time for me to leave, she took me in her carriage to the station.
+As we were almost there, I missed my gloves, and said, 'I must have left
+them; but there is not time to go back.'
+
+With one of those quick, impulsive motions which were so natural to her
+in doing a kindness, she drew off her own and said, 'Take mine if they
+will serve you.'
+
+I hesitated a moment; and then the thought, that I might never see her
+again, came over me, and I said, 'Oh, yes! thanks.'  That was the last
+earthly word of love between us.  But, thank God, those who love worthily
+never meet for the last time: there is always a future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.  LADY BYRON'S STORY AS TOLD ME.
+
+
+I now come to the particulars of that most painful interview which has
+been the cause of all this controversy.  My sister and myself were going
+from London to Eversley to visit the Rev. C. Kingsley.  On our way, we
+stopped, by Lady Byron's invitation, to lunch with her at her summer
+residence on Ham Common, near Richmond; and it was then arranged, that on
+our return, we should make her a short visit, as she said she had a
+subject of importance on which she wished to converse with me alone.
+
+On our return from Eversley, we arrived at her house in the morning.
+
+It appeared to be one of Lady Byron's well days.  She was up and dressed,
+and moved about her house with her usual air of quiet simplicity; as full
+of little acts of consideration for all about her as if they were the
+habitual invalids, and she the well person.
+
+There were with her two ladies of her most intimate friends, by whom she
+seemed to be regarded with a sort of worship.  When she left the room for
+a moment, they looked after her with a singular expression of respect and
+affection, and expressed freely their admiration of her character, and
+their fears that her unselfishness might be leading her to over-exertion.
+
+After lunch, I retired with Lady Byron; and my sister remained with her
+friends.  I should here remark, that the chief subject of the
+conversation which ensued was not entirely new to me.  In the interval
+between my first and second visits to England, a lady who for many years
+had enjoyed Lady Byron's friendship and confidence, had, with her
+consent, stated the case generally to me, giving some of the incidents:
+so that I was in a manner prepared for what followed.
+
+Those who accuse Lady Byron of being a person fond of talking upon this
+subject, and apt to make unconsidered confidences, can have known very
+little of her, of her reserve, and of the apparent difficulty she had in
+speaking on subjects nearest her heart.
+
+Her habitual calmness and composure of manner, her collected dignity on
+all occasions, are often mentioned by her husband, sometimes with
+bitterness, sometimes with admiration.  He says, 'Though I accuse Lady
+Byron of an excess of self-respect, I must in candour admit that, if ever
+a person had excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has; as, in
+all her thoughts, words, and deeds, she is the most decorous woman that
+ever existed, and must appear, what few I fancy could, a perfectly
+refined gentlewoman, even to her femme de chambre.'
+
+This calmness and dignity were never more manifested than in this
+interview.  In recalling the conversation at this distance of time, I
+cannot remember all the language used.  Some particular words and forms
+of expression I do remember, and those I give; and in other cases I give
+my recollection of the substance of what was said.
+
+There was something awful to me in the intensity of repressed emotion
+which she showed as she proceeded.  The great fact upon which all turned
+was stated in words that were unmistakable:--
+
+'He was guilty of incest with his sister!'
+
+She here became so deathly pale, that I feared she would faint; and
+hastened to say, 'My dear friend, I have heard that.'  She asked quickly,
+'From whom?' and I answered, 'From Mrs. ----;' when she replied, 'Oh,
+yes!' as if recollecting herself.
+
+I then asked her some questions; in reply to which she said, 'I will tell
+you.'
+
+She then spoke of her first acquaintance with Lord Byron; from which I
+gathered that she, an only child, brought up in retirement, and living
+much within herself, had been, as deep natures often were, intensely
+stirred by his poetry; and had felt a deep interest in him personally, as
+one that had the germs of all that is glorious and noble.
+
+When she was introduced to him, and perceived his admiration of herself,
+and at last received his offer, although deeply moved, she doubted her
+own power to be to him all that a wife should be.  She declined his
+offer, therefore, but desired to retain his friendship.  After this, as
+she said, a correspondence ensued, mostly on moral and literary subjects;
+and, by this correspondence, her interest in him was constantly
+increased.
+
+At last, she said, he sent her a very beautiful letter, offering himself
+again.  'I thought,' she added, 'that it was sincere, and that I might
+now show him all I felt.  I wrote just what was in my heart.
+
+'Afterwards,' she said, 'I found in one of his journals this notice of my
+letter: "A letter from Bell,--never rains but it pours."'
+
+There was through her habitual calm a shade of womanly indignation as she
+spoke these words; but it was gone in a moment.  I said, 'And did he not
+love you, then?'  She answered, 'No, my dear: he did not love me.'
+
+'Why, then, did he wish to marry you?'  She laid her hand on mine, and
+said in a low voice, 'You will see.'
+
+She then told me, that, shortly after the declared engagement, he came to
+her father's house to visit her as an accepted suitor.  The visit was to
+her full of disappointment.  His appearance was so strange, moody, and
+unaccountable, and his treatment of her so peculiar, that she came to the
+conclusion that he did not love her, and sought an opportunity to
+converse with him alone.
+
+She told him that she saw from his manner that their engagement did not
+give him pleasure; that she should never blame him if he wished to
+dissolve it; that his nature was exceptional; and if, on a nearer view of
+the situation, he shrank from it, she would release him, and remain no
+less than ever his friend.
+
+Upon this, she said, he fainted entirely away.
+
+She stopped a moment, and then, as if speaking with great effort, added,
+'Then I was sure he must love me.'
+
+'And did he not?' said I.  'What other cause could have led to this
+emotion?'
+
+She looked at me very sadly, and said, 'Fear of detection.'
+
+'What!' said I, 'did that cause then exist?'
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'it did.'  And she explained that she now attributed
+Lord Byron's great agitation to fear, that, in some way, suspicion of the
+crime had been aroused in her mind, and that on this account she was
+seeking to break the engagement.  She said, that, from that moment, her
+sympathies were aroused for him, to soothe the remorse and anguish which
+seemed preying on his mind, and which she then regarded as the
+sensibility of an unusually exacting moral nature, which judged itself by
+higher standards, and condemned itself unsparingly for what most young
+men of his times regarded as venial faults.  She had every hope for his
+future, and all the enthusiasm of belief that so many men and women of
+those times and ours have had in his intrinsic nobleness.  She said the
+gloom, however, seemed to be even deeper when he came to the marriage;
+but she looked at it as the suffering of a peculiar being, to whom she
+was called to minister.  I said to her, that, even in the days of my
+childhood, I had heard of something very painful that had passed as they
+were in the carriage, immediately after marriage.  She then said that it
+was so; that almost his first words, when they were alone, were, that she
+might once have saved him; that, if she had accepted him when he first
+offered, she might have made him anything she pleased; but that, as it
+was, she would find she had married a devil.
+
+The conversation, as recorded in Lady Anne Barnard's Diary, seems only a
+continuation of the foregoing, and just what might have followed upon it.
+
+I then asked how she became certain of the true cause.
+
+She said, that, from the outset of their married life, his conduct
+towards her was strange and unaccountable, even during the first weeks
+after the wedding, while they were visiting her friends, and outwardly on
+good terms.  He seemed resolved to shake and combat both her religious
+principles and her views of the family state.  He tried to undermine her
+faith in Christianity as a rule of life by argument and by ridicule.  He
+set before her the Continental idea of the liberty of marriage; it being
+a simple partnership of friendship and property, the parties to which
+were allowed by one another to pursue their own separate individual
+tastes.  He told her, that, as he could not be expected to confine
+himself to her, neither should he expect or wish that she should confine
+herself to him; that she was young and pretty, and could have her lovers,
+and he should never object; and that she must allow him the same freedom.
+
+She said that she did not comprehend to what this was tending till after
+they came to London, and his sister came to stay with them.
+
+At what precise time the idea of an improper connection between her
+husband and his sister was first forced upon her, she did not say; but
+she told me how it was done.  She said that one night, in her presence,
+he treated his sister with a liberty which both shocked and astonished
+her.  Seeing her amazement and alarm, he came up to her, and said, in a
+sneering tone, 'I suppose you perceive you are not wanted here.  Go to
+your own room, and leave us alone.  We can amuse ourselves better without
+you.'
+
+She said, 'I went to my room, trembling.  I fell down on my knees, and
+prayed to my heavenly Father to have mercy on them.  I thought, "What
+shall I do?"'
+
+I remember, after this, a pause in the conversation, during which she
+seemed struggling with thoughts and emotions; and, for my part, I was
+unable to utter a word, or ask a question.
+
+She did not tell me what followed immediately upon this, nor how soon
+after she spoke on the subject with either of the parties.  She first
+began to speak of conversations afterwards held with Lord Byron, in which
+he boldly avowed the connection as having existed in time past, and as
+one that was to continue in time to come; and implied that she must
+submit to it.  She put it to his conscience as concerning his sister's
+soul, and he said that it was no sin, that it was the way the world was
+first peopled: the Scriptures taught that all the world descended from
+one pair; and how could that be unless brothers married their sisters?
+that, if not a sin then, it could not be a sin now.
+
+I immediately said, 'Why, Lady Byron, those are the very arguments given
+in the drama of "Cain."'
+
+'The very same,' was her reply.  'He could reason very speciously on this
+subject.'  She went on to say, that, when she pressed him hard with the
+universal sentiment of mankind as to the horror and the crime, he took
+another turn, and said that the horror and crime were the very
+attraction; that he had worn out all ordinary forms of sin, and that he
+'longed for the stimulus of a new kind of vice.'  She set before him the
+dread of detection; and then he became furious.  She should never be the
+means of his detection, he said.  She should leave him; that he was
+resolved upon: but she should always bear all the blame of the
+separation.  In the sneering tone which was common with him, he said,
+'The world will believe me, and it will not believe you.  The world has
+made up its mind that "By" is a glorious boy; and the world will go for
+"By," right or wrong.  Besides, I shall make it my life's object to
+discredit you: I shall use all my powers.  Read "Caleb Williams," {161}
+and you will see that I shall do by you just as Falkland did by Caleb.'
+
+I said that all this seemed to me like insanity.  She said that she was
+for a time led to think that it was insanity, and excused and pitied him;
+that his treatment of her expressed such hatred and malignity, that she
+knew not what else to think of it; that he seemed resolved to drive her
+out of the house at all hazards, and threatened her, if she should
+remain, in a way to alarm the heart of any woman: yet, thinking him
+insane, she left him at last with the sorrow with which anyone might
+leave a dear friend whose reason was wholly overthrown, and to whom in
+this desolation she was no longer permitted to minister.
+
+I inquired in one of the pauses of the conversation whether Mrs. Leigh
+was a peculiarly beautiful or attractive woman.
+
+'No, my dear: she was plain.'
+
+'Was she, then, distinguished for genius or talent of any kind?'
+
+'Oh, no!  Poor woman! she was weak, relatively to him, and wholly under
+his control.'
+
+'And what became of her?' I said.
+
+'She afterwards repented, and became a truly good woman.'  I think it was
+here she mentioned that she had frequently seen and conversed with Mrs.
+Leigh in the latter part of her life; and she seemed to derive comfort
+from the recollection.
+
+I asked, 'Was there a child?'  I had been told by Mrs. ---- that there
+was a daughter, who had lived some years.
+
+She said there was one, a daughter, who made her friends much trouble,
+being of a very difficult nature to manage.  I had understood that at one
+time this daughter escaped from her friends to the Continent, and that
+Lady Byron assisted in efforts to recover her.  Of Lady Byron's kindness
+both to Mrs. Leigh and the child, I had before heard from Mrs. ----, who
+gave me my first information.
+
+It is also strongly impressed on my mind, that Lady Byron, in answer to
+some question of mine as to whether there was ever any meeting between
+Lord Byron and his sister after he left England, answered, that she had
+insisted upon it, or made it a condition, that Mrs. Leigh should not go
+abroad to him.
+
+When the conversation as to events was over, as I stood musing, I said,
+'Have you no evidence that he repented?' and alluded to the mystery of
+his death, and the message be endeavoured to utter.
+
+She answered quickly, and with great decision, that whatever might have
+been his meaning at that hour, she felt sure he had finally repented; and
+added with great earnestness, 'I do not believe that any child of the
+heavenly Father is ever left to eternal sin.'
+
+I said that such a hope was most delightful to my feelings, but that I
+had always regarded the indulgence of it as a dangerous one.
+
+Her look, voice, and manner, at that moment, are indelibly fixed in my
+mind.  She looked at me so sadly, so firmly, and said,--
+
+'Danger, Mrs. Stowe!  What danger can come from indulging that hope, like
+the danger that comes from not having it?'
+
+I said in my turn, 'What danger comes from not having it?'
+
+'The danger of losing all faith in God,' she said, 'all hope for others,
+all strength to try and save them.  I once knew a lady,' she added, 'who
+was in a state of scepticism and despair from belief in that doctrine.  I
+think I saved her by giving her my faith.'
+
+I was silent; and she continued: 'Lord Byron believed in eternal
+punishment fully: for though he reasoned against Christianity as it is
+commonly received, he could not reason himself out of it; and I think it
+made him desperate.  He used to say, "The worst of it is I do believe."
+Had he seen God as I see him, I am sure his heart would have relented.'
+
+She went on to say, that his sins, great as they were, admitted of much
+palliation and excuse; that he was the child of singular and ill-matched
+parents; that he had an organisation originally fine, but one capable
+equally of great good or great evil; that in his childhood he had only
+the worst and most fatal influences; that he grew up into manhood with no
+guide; that there was everything in the classical course of the schools
+to develop an unhealthy growth of passion, and no moral influence of any
+kind to restrain it; that the manners of his day were corrupt; that what
+were now considered vices in society were then spoken of as matters of
+course among young noblemen; that drinking, gaming, and licentiousness
+everywhere abounded and that, up to a certain time, he was no worse than
+multitudes of other young men of his day,--only that the vices of his day
+were worse for him.  The excesses of passion, the disregard of physical
+laws in eating, drinking, and living, wrought effects on him that they
+did not on less sensitively organised frames, and prepared him for the
+evil hour when he fell into the sin which shaded his whole life.  All the
+rest was a struggle with its consequences,--sinning more and more to
+conceal the sin of the past.  But she believed he never outlived remorse;
+that he always suffered; and that this showed that God had not utterly
+forsaken him.  Remorse, she said, always showed moral sensibility, and,
+while that remained, there was always hope.
+
+She now began to speak of her grounds for thinking it might be her duty
+fully to publish this story before she left the world.
+
+First she said that, through the whole course of her life, she had felt
+the eternal value of truth, and seen how dreadful a thing was falsehood,
+and how fearful it was to be an accomplice in it, even by silence.  Lord
+Byron had demoralised the moral sense of England, and he had done it in a
+great degree by the sympathy excited by falsehood.  This had been pleaded
+in extenuation of all his crimes and vices, and led to a lowering of the
+standard of morals in the literary world.  Now it was proposed to print
+cheap editions of his works, and sell them among the common people, and
+interest them in him by the circulation of this same story.
+
+She then said in effect, that she believed in retribution and suffering
+in the future life, and that the consequences of sins here follow us
+there; and it was strongly impressed upon her mind that Lord Byron must
+suffer in looking on the evil consequences of what he had done in this
+life, and in seeing the further extension of that evil.
+
+'It has sometimes strongly appeared to me,' she said, 'that he cannot be
+at peace until this injustice has been righted.  Such is the strong
+feeling that I have when I think of going where he is.'
+
+These things, she said, had led her to inquire whether it might not be
+her duty to make a full and clear disclosure before she left the world.
+
+Of course, I did not listen to this story as one who was investigating
+its worth.  I received it as truth.  And the purpose for which it was
+communicated was not to enable me to prove it to the world, but to ask my
+opinion whether she should show it to the world before leaving it.  The
+whole consultation was upon the assumption that she had at her command
+such proofs as could not be questioned.
+
+Concerning what they were I did not minutely inquire: only, in answer to
+a general question, she said that she had letters and documents in proof
+of her story.  Knowing Lady Byron's strength of mind, her
+clear-headedness, her accurate habits, and her perfect knowledge of the
+matter, I considered her judgment on this point decisive.
+
+I told her that I would take the subject into consideration, and give my
+opinion in a few days.  That night, after my sister and myself had
+retired to our own apartment, I related to her the whole history, and we
+spent the night in talking of it.  I was powerfully impressed with the
+justice and propriety of an immediate disclosure; while she, on the
+contrary, represented the painful consequences that would probably come
+upon Lady Byron from taking such a step.
+
+Before we parted the next day, I requested Lady Byron to give me some
+memoranda of such dates and outlines of the general story as would enable
+me better to keep it in its connection; which she did.
+
+On giving me the paper, Lady Byron requested me to return it to her when
+it had ceased to be of use to me for the purpose indicated.
+
+Accordingly, a day or two after, I enclosed it to her in a hasty note, as
+I was then leaving London for Paris, and had not yet had time fully to
+consider the subject.
+
+On reviewing my note, I can recall that then the whole history appeared
+to me like one of those singular cases where unnatural impulses to vice
+are the result of a taint of constitutional insanity.  This has always
+seemed to me the only way of accounting for instances of utterly
+motiveless and abnormal wickedness and cruelty.  These my first
+impressions were expressed in the hasty note written at the time:--
+
+                                'LONDON, Nov. 5, 1856.
+
+   'DEAREST FRIEND,--I return these.  They have held mine eyes waking!
+   How strange! how unaccountable!  Have you ever subjected the facts to
+   the judgment of a medical man learned in nervous pathology?
+
+   'Is it not insanity?
+
+   "Great wits to madness nearly are allied,
+   And thin partitions do their bounds divide."
+
+   'But my purpose to-night is not to write you fully what I think of
+   this matter.  I am going to write to you from Paris more at leisure.'
+
+The rest of the letter was taken up in the final details of a charity in
+which Lady Byron had been engaged with me in assisting an unfortunate
+artist.  It concludes thus:--
+
+   'I write now in all haste, en route for Paris.  As to America, all is
+   not lost yet. {168}  Farewell!  I love you, my dear friend, as never
+   before, with an intense feeling I cannot easily express.  God bless
+   you!
+
+                                        'H. B. S.'
+
+The next letter is as follows:--
+
+                                  'Paris, Dec. 17, 1856.
+
+   'DEAR LADY BYRON,--The Kansas Committee have written me a letter
+   desiring me to express to Miss ---- their gratitude for the five
+   pounds she sent them.  I am not personally acquainted with her, and
+   must return these acknowledgments through you.
+
+   'I wrote you a day or two since, enclosing the reply of the Kansas
+   Committee to you.
+
+   'On that subject on which you spoke to me the last time we were
+   together, I have thought often and deeply.
+
+   'I have changed my mind somewhat.  Considering the peculiar
+   circumstances of the case, I could wish that the sacred veil of
+   silence, so bravely thrown over the past, should never be withdrawn
+   during the time that you remain with us.
+
+   'I would say, then, Leave all with some discreet friends, who, after
+   both have passed from earth, shall say what was due to justice.
+
+   'I am led to think this by seeing how low, how unjust, how unworthy,
+   the judgments of this world are; and I would not that what I so much
+   respect, love, and revere should be placed within reach of its harpy
+   claw, which pollutes what it touches.
+
+   'The day will yet come which will bring to light every hidden thing.
+   "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that
+   shall not be known;" and so justice will not fail.
+
+   'Such, my dear friend, are my thoughts; different from what they were
+   since first I heard that strange, sad history.  Meanwhile, I love you
+   ever, whether we meet again on earth or not.
+
+                                 'Affectionately yours,
+
+                                      'H. B. S.'
+
+The following letter will here be inserted as confirming a part of Lady
+Byron's story:--
+
+                TO THE EDITOR OF 'MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE.'
+
+   'SIR,--I trust that you will hold me excused from any desire to be
+   troublesome, or to rush into print.  Both these things are far from my
+   wish.  But the publication of a book having for its object the
+   vindication of Lord Byron's character, and the subsequent appearance
+   in your magazine of Mrs. Stowe's article in defence of Lady Byron,
+   having led to so much controversy in the various newspapers of the
+   day, I feel constrained to put in a few words among the rest.
+
+   'My father was intimately acquainted with Lady Byron's family for many
+   years, both before and after her marriage; being, in fact, steward to
+   Sir Ralph Milbanke at Seaham, where the marriage took place; and, from
+   all my recollections of what he told me of the affair (and he used
+   often to talk of it, up to the time of his death, eight years ago), I
+   fully agree with Mrs. Stowe's view of the case, and desire to add my
+   humble testimony to the truth of what she has stated.
+
+   'Whilst Byron was staying at Seaham, previous to his marriage, he
+   spent most of his time pistol-shooting in the plantations adjoining
+   the hall, often making use of his glove as a mark; his servant being
+   with him to load for him.
+
+   'When all was in readiness for the wedding-ceremony (which took place
+   in the drawing-room of the hall), Byron had to be sought for in the
+   grounds, where he was walking in his usual surly mood.
+
+   'After the marriage, they posted to Halnaby Lodge in Yorkshire, a
+   distance of about forty miles; to which place my father accompanied
+   them, and he always spoke strongly of Lady Byron's apparent distress
+   during and at the end of the journey.
+
+   'The insulting words mentioned by Mrs. Stowe were spoken by Byron
+   before leaving the park at Seaham; after which he appeared to sit in
+   moody silence, reading a book, for the rest of the journey.  At
+   Halnaby, a number of persons, tenants and others, were met to cheer
+   them on their arrival.  Of these he took not the slightest notice, but
+   jumped out of the carriage, and walked away, leaving his bride to
+   alight by herself.  She shook hands with my father, and begged that he
+   would see that some refreshment was supplied to those who had thus
+   come to welcome them.
+
+   'I have in my possession several letters (which I should be glad to
+   show to anyone interested in the matter) both from Lady Byron, and her
+   mother, Lady Milbanke, to my father, all showing the deep and kind
+   interest which they took in the welfare of all connected with them,
+   and directing the distribution of various charities, etc.  Pensions
+   were allowed both to the old servants of the Milbankes and to several
+   poor persons in the village and neighbourhood for the rest of their
+   lives; and Lady Byron never ceased to take a lively interest in all
+   that concerned them.
+
+   'I desire to tender my humble thanks to Mrs. Stowe for having come
+   forward in defence of one whose character has been much
+   misrepresented; and to you, sir, for having published the same in your
+   pages.
+
+                     'I have the honour to be, sir, yours obediently,
+
+                                     'G. H. AIRD.
+
+   'DAOURTY, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, Sept. 29, 1869.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.  CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS.
+
+
+I have now fulfilled as conscientiously as possible the requests of those
+who feel that they have a right to know exactly what was said in this
+interview.
+
+It has been my object, in doing this, to place myself just where I should
+stand were I giving evidence under oath before a legal tribunal.  In my
+first published account, there were given some smaller details of the
+story, of no particular value to the main purpose of it, which I received
+not from Lady Byron, but from her confidential friend.  One of these was
+the account of her seeing Lord Byron's favourite spaniel lying at his
+door, and the other was the scene of the parting.
+
+The first was communicated to me before I ever saw Lady Byron, and under
+these circumstances:--I was invited to meet her, and had expressed my
+desire to do so, because Lord Byron had been all my life an object of
+great interest to me.  I inquired what sort of a person Lady Byron was.
+My friend spoke of her with enthusiasm.  I then said, 'but of course she
+never loved Lord Byron, or she would not have left him.'  The lady
+answered, 'I can show you with what feelings she left him by relating
+this story;' and then followed the anecdote.
+
+Subsequently, she also related to me the other story of the parting-scene
+between Lord and Lady Byron.  In regard to these two incidents, my
+recollection is clear.
+
+It will be observed by the reader that Lady Byron's conversation with me
+was simply for consultation on one point, and that point whether she
+herself should publish the story before her death.  It was not,
+therefore, a complete history of all the events in their order, but
+specimens of a few incidents and facts.  Her object was, not to prove her
+story to me, nor to put me in possession of it with a view to my proving
+it, but simply and briefly to show me what it was, that I might judge as
+to the probable results of its publication at that time.
+
+It therefore comprised primarily these points:--
+
+1.  An exact statement, in so many words, of the crime.
+
+2.  A statement of the manner in which it was first forced on her
+attention by Lord Byron's words and actions, including his admissions and
+defences of it.
+
+3.  The admission of a period when she had ascribed his whole conduct to
+insanity.
+
+4.  A reference to later positive evidences of guilt, the existence of a
+child, and Mrs. Leigh's subsequent repentance.
+
+And here I have a word to say in reference to the alleged inaccuracies of
+my true story.
+
+The dates that Lady Byron gave me on the memoranda did not relate either
+to the time of the first disclosure, or the period when her doubts became
+certainties; nor did her conversation touch either of these points: and,
+on a careful review of the latter, I see clearly that it omitted dwelling
+upon anything which I might be supposed to have learned from her already
+published statement.
+
+I re-enclosed that paper to her from London, and have never seen it
+since.
+
+In writing my account, which I designed to do in the most general terms,
+I took for my guide Miss Martineau's published Memoir of Lady Byron,
+which has long stood uncontradicted before the public, of which
+Macmillan's London edition is now before me.  The reader is referred to
+page 316, which reads thus:--
+
+'She was born 1792; married in January 1814; returned to her father's
+house in 1816; died on May 16, 1860.'  This makes her married life two
+years; but we need not say that the date is inaccurate, as Lady Byron was
+married in 1815.
+
+Supposing Lady Byron's married life to have covered two years, I could
+only reconcile its continuance for that length of time to her uncertainty
+as to his sanity; to deceptions practised on her, making her doubt at one
+time, and believe at another; and his keeping her in a general state of
+turmoil and confusion, till at last he took the step of banishing her.
+
+Various other points taken from Miss Martineau have also been attacked as
+inaccuracies; for example, the number of executions in the house: but
+these points, though of no importance, are substantially borne out by
+Moore's statements.
+
+This controversy, unfortunately, cannot be managed with the accuracy of a
+legal trial.  Its course, hitherto, has rather resembled the course of a
+drawing-room scandal, where everyone freely throws in an assertion, with
+or without proof.  In making out my narrative, however, I shall use only
+certain authentic sources, some of which have for a long time been before
+the public, and some of which have floated up from the waves of the
+recent controversy.  I consider as authentic sources,--
+
+Moore's Life of Byron;
+
+Lady Byron's own account of the separation, published in 1830;
+
+Lady Byron's statements to me in 1856;
+
+Lord Lindsay's communication, giving an extract from Lady Anne Barnard's
+diary, and a copy of a letter from Lady Byron dated 1818, about three
+years after her marriage;
+
+Mrs. Mimms' testimony, as given in a daily paper published at Newcastle,
+England;
+
+And Lady Byron's letters, as given recently in the late 'London
+Quarterly.'
+
+All which documents appear to arrange themselves into a connected series.
+
+From these, then, let us construct the story.
+
+According to Mrs. Mimms' account, which is likely to be accurate, the
+time spent by Lord and Lady Byron in bridal-visiting was three weeks at
+Halnaby Hall, and six weeks at Seaham, when Mrs. Mimms quitted their
+service.
+
+During this first period of three weeks, Lord Byron's treatment of his
+wife, as testified to by the servant, was such that she advised her young
+mistress to return to her parents; and, at one time, Lady Byron had
+almost resolved to do so.
+
+What the particulars of his conduct were, the servant refuses to state;
+being bound by a promise of silence to her mistress.  She, however,
+testifies to a warm friendship existing between Lady Byron and Mrs.
+Leigh, in a manner which would lead us to feel that Lady Byron received
+and was received by Lord Byron's sister with the greatest affection.  Lady
+Byron herself says to Lady Anne Barnard, 'I had heard that he was the
+best of brothers;' and the inference is, that she, at an early period of
+her married life, felt the greatest confidence in his sister, and wished
+to have her with them as much as possible.  In Lady Anne's account, this
+wish to have the sister with her was increased by Lady Byron's distress
+at her husband's attempts to corrupt her principles with regard to
+religion and marriage.
+
+In Moore's Life, vol. iii., letter 217, Lord Byron writes from Seaham to
+Moore, under date of March 8, sending a copy of his verses in Lady
+Byron's handwriting, and saying, 'We shall leave this place to-morrow,
+and shall stop on our way to town, in the interval of taking a house
+there, at Colonel Leigh's, near Newmarket, where any epistle of yours
+will find its welcome way.  I have been very comfortable here, listening
+to that d---d monologue which elderly gentlemen call conversation, in
+which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening, save one,
+when he played upon the fiddle.  However, they have been vastly kind and
+hospitable, and I like them and the place vastly; and I hope they will
+live many happy months.  Bell is in health and unvaried good-humour and
+behaviour; but we are in all the agonies of packing and parting.'
+
+Nine days after this, under date of March 17, Lord Byron says, 'We mean
+to metropolize to-morrow, and you will address your next to Piccadilly.'
+The inference is, that the days intermediate were spent at Colonel
+Leigh's.  The next letters, and all subsequent ones for six months, are
+dated from Piccadilly.
+
+As we have shown, there is every reason to believe that a warm friendship
+had thus arisen between Mrs. Leigh and Lady Byron, and that, during all
+this time, Lady Byron desired as much of the society of her sister-in-law
+as possible.  She was a married woman and a mother, her husband's nearest
+relative; and Lady Byron could with more propriety ask, from her, counsel
+or aid in respect to his peculiarities than she could from her own
+parents.  If we consider the character of Lady Byron as given by Mrs.
+Mimms, that of a young person of warm but repressed feeling, without
+sister or brother, longing for human sympathy, and having so far found no
+relief but in talking with a faithful dependant,--we may easily see that
+the acquisition of a sister through Lord Byron might have been all in all
+to her, and that the feelings which he checked and rejected for himself
+might have flowed out towards his sister with enthusiasm.  The date of
+Mrs. Leigh's visit does not appear.
+
+The first domestic indication in Lord Byron's letters from London is the
+announcement of the death of Lady Byron's uncle, Lord Wentworth, from
+whom came large expectations of property.  Lord Byron had mentioned him
+before in his letters as so kind to Bell and himself that he could not
+find it in his heart to wish him in heaven if he preferred staying here.
+In his letter of April 23, he mentions going to the play immediately
+after hearing this news, 'although,' as he says, 'he ought to have stayed
+at home in sackcloth for "unc."'
+
+On June 12, he writes that Lady Byron is more than three months advanced
+in her progress towards maternity; and that they have been out very
+little, as he wishes to keep her quiet.  We are informed by Moore that
+Lord Byron was at this time a member of the Drury-Lane Theatre Committee;
+and that, in this unlucky connection, one of the fatalities of the first
+year of trial as a husband lay.  From the strain of Byron's letters, as
+given in Moore, it is apparent, that, while he thinks it best for his
+wife to remain at home, he does not propose to share the retirement, but
+prefers running his own separate career with such persons as thronged the
+greenroom of the theatre in those days.
+
+In commenting on Lord Byron's course, we must not by any means be
+supposed to indicate that he was doing any more or worse than most gay
+young men of his time.  The licence of the day as to getting drunk at
+dinner-parties, and leading, generally, what would, in these days, be
+called a disorderly life, was great.  We should infer that none of the
+literary men of Byron's time would have been ashamed of being drunk
+occasionally.  The Noctes Ambrosianae Club of 'Blackwood' is full of
+songs glorying, in the broadest terms, in out-and-out drunkenness, and
+inviting to it as the highest condition of a civilised being. {178a}
+
+But drunkenness upon Lord Byron had a peculiar and specific effect, which
+he notices afterwards, in his Journal, at Venice: 'The effect of all
+wines and spirits upon me is, however, strange.  It settles, but makes me
+gloomy--gloomy at the very moment of their effect: it composes, however,
+though sullenly.' {178b}  And, again, in another place, he says, 'Wine
+and spirits make me sullen, and savage to ferocity.'
+
+It is well known that the effects of alcoholic excitement are various as
+the natures of the subjects.  But by far the worst effects, and the most
+destructive to domestic peace, are those that occur in cases where
+spirits, instead of acting on the nerves of motion, and depriving the
+subject of power in that direction, stimulate the brain so as to produce
+there the ferocity, the steadiness, the utter deadness to compassion or
+conscience, which characterise a madman.  How fearful to a sensitive
+young mother in the period of pregnancy might be the return of such a
+madman to the domestic roof!  Nor can we account for those scenes
+described in Lady Anne Barnard's letters, where Lord Byron returned from
+his evening parties to try torturing experiments on his wife, otherwise
+than by his own statement, that spirits, while they steadied him, made
+him 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity.'
+
+Take for example this:--
+
+   'One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me
+   (Lady B.) so indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a
+   determined calmness, that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him.
+   He called himself a monster, and, though his sister was present, threw
+   himself in agony at my feet.  "I could not, no, I could not, forgive
+   him such injuries!  He had lost me forever!"  Astonished at this
+   return to virtue, my tears, I believe, flowed over his face; and I
+   said, "Byron, all is forgotten; never, never shall you hear of it
+   more."
+
+   'He started up, and folding his arms while he looked at me, burst out
+   into laughter.  "What do you mean?" said I.  "Only a philosophical
+   experiment; that's all," said he.  "I wished to ascertain the value of
+   your resolutions."'
+
+To ascribe such deliberate cruelty as this to the effect of drink upon
+Lord Byron, is the most charitable construction that can be put upon his
+conduct.
+
+Yet the manners of the period were such, that Lord Byron must have often
+come to this condition while only doing what many of his acquaintances
+did freely, and without fear of consequences.
+
+Mr. Moore, with his usual artlessness, gives us an idea of a private
+supper between himself and Lord Byron.  We give it, with our own italics,
+as a specimen of many others:--
+
+   'Having taken upon me to order the repast, and knowing that Lord Byron
+   for the last two days had done nothing towards sustenance beyond
+   eating a few biscuits and (to appease appetite) chewing mastic, I
+   desired that we should have a good supply of at least two kinds of
+   fish.  My companion, however, confined himself to lobsters; and of
+   these finished two or three, to his own share, interposing, sometimes,
+   a small liqueur-glass of strong white brandy, sometimes a tumbler of
+   very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near half
+   a dozen small glasses of the latter, without which, alternately with
+   the hot water, he appeared to think the lobster could not be digested.
+   After this, we had claret, of which, having despatched two bottles
+   between us, at about four o'clock in the morning we parted.
+
+   'As Pope has thought his "delicious lobster-nights" worth
+   commemorating, these particulars of one in which Lord Byron was
+   concerned may also have some interest.
+
+   'Among other nights of the same description which I had the happiness
+   of passing with him, I remember once, in returning home from some
+   assembly at rather a late hour, we saw lights in the windows of his
+   old haunt, Stevens's in Bond Street, and agreed to stop there and sup.
+   On entering, we found an old friend of his, Sir G---- W----, who
+   joined our party; and, the lobsters and brandy and water being put in
+   requisition, it was (as usual on such occasions) broad daylight before
+   we separated.'--Vol. iii. p.83.
+
+During the latter part of Lady Byron's pregnancy, it appears from Moore
+that Byron was, night after night, engaged out at dinner parties, in
+which getting drunk was considered as of course the finale, as appears
+from the following letters:--
+
+                               (LETTER 228.)
+
+                               TO MR. MOORE.
+
+                                   'TERRACE, PICCADILLY, OCT. 31,1815.
+
+   'I have not been able to ascertain precisely the time of duration of
+   the stock-market; but I believe it is a good time for selling out, and
+   I hope so.  First, because I shall see you; and, next, because I shall
+   receive certain moneys on behalf of Lady B., the which will materially
+   conduce to my comfort; I wanting (as the duns say) "to make up a sum."
+
+   'Yesterday I dined out with a large-ish party, where were Sheridan and
+   Colman, Harry Harris, of C. G., and his brother, Sir Gilbert
+   Heathcote, Ds. Kinnaird, and others of note and notoriety.  Like other
+   parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then
+   argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, * then
+   altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk.  When we had reached
+   the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down
+   again without stumbling; and, to crown all, Kinnaird and I had to
+   conduct Sheridan down a d---d corkscrew staircase, which had certainly
+   been constructed before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to
+   which no legs, however crooked, could possibly accommodate themselves.
+   We deposited him safe at home, where his man, evidently used to the
+   business, {181} waited to receive him in the hall.
+
+   'Both he and Colman were, as usual, very good; but I carried away much
+   wine, and the wine had previously carried away my memory: so that all
+   was hiccough and happiness for the last hour or so, and I am not
+   impregnated with any of the conversation.  Perhaps you heard of a late
+   answer of Sheridan to the watchman who found him bereft of that
+   "divine particle of air" called reason . . . He (the watchman) found
+   Sherry in the street fuddled and bewildered, and almost insensible.
+   "Who are you, sir?"--No answer.  "What's your name?"--A hiccough.
+   "What's your name?"--Answer, in a slow, deliberate, and impassive
+   tone, "Wilberforce!"  Is not that Sherry all over?--and, to my mind,
+   excellent.  Poor fellow, his very dregs are better than the "first
+   sprightly runnings" of others.
+
+   'My paper is full, and I have a grievous headache.
+
+   'P.S.--Lady B. is in full progress.  Next month will bring to light
+   (with the aid of "Juno Lucina, fer opem," or rather opes, for the last
+   are most wanted) the tenth wonder of the world; Gil Blas being the
+   eighth, and he (my son's father) the ninth.'
+
+Here we have a picture of the whole story,--Lady Byron within a month of
+her confinement; her money being used to settle debts; her husband out at
+a dinner-party, going through the usual course of such parties, able to
+keep his legs and help Sheridan downstairs, and going home 'gloomy, and
+savage to ferocity,' to his wife.
+
+Four days after this (letter 229), we find that this dinner-party is not
+an exceptional one, but one of a series: for he says, 'To-day I dine with
+Kinnaird,--we are to have Sheridan and Colman again; and to-morrow, once
+more, at Sir Gilbert Heathcote's.'
+
+Afterward, in Venice, he reviews the state of his health, at this period
+in London; and his account shows that his excesses in the vices of his
+times had wrought effects on his sensitive, nervous organisation, very
+different from what they might on the more phlegmatic constitutions of
+ordinary Englishmen.  In his journal, dated Venice, Feb. 2, 1821, he
+says,--
+
+   'I have been considering what can be the reason why I always wake at a
+   certain hour in the morning, and always in very bad spirits,--I may
+   say, in actual despair and despondency, in all respects, even of that
+   which pleased me over night.  In about an hour or two this goes off,
+   and I compose either to sleep again, or at least to quiet.  In
+   England, five years ago, I had the same kind of hypochondria, but
+   accompanied with so violent a thirst, that I have drunk as many as
+   fifteen bottles of soda-water in one night, after going to bed, and
+   been still thirsty,--calculating, however, some lost from the bursting-
+   out and effervescence and overflowing of the soda-water in drawing the
+   corks, or striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty
+   impatience.  At present, I have not the thirst; but the depression of
+   spirits is no less violent.'--Vol. v. p.96.
+
+These extracts go to show what must have been the condition of the man
+whom Lady Byron was called to receive at the intervals when he came back
+from his various social excitements and pleasures.  That his nerves were
+exacerbated by violent extremes of abstinence and reckless indulgence;
+that he was often day after day drunk, and that drunkenness made him
+savage and ferocious,--such are the facts clearly shown by Mr. Moore's
+narrative.  Of the natural peculiarities of Lord Byron's temper, he thus
+speaks to the Countess of Blessington:--
+
+   'I often think that I inherit my violence and bad temper from my poor
+   mother, not that my father, from all I could ever learn, had a much
+   better; so that it is no wonder I have such a very bad one.  As long
+   as I can remember anything, I recollect being subject to violent
+   paroxysms of rage, so disproportioned to the cause as to surprise me
+   when they were over; and this still continues.  I cannot coolly view
+   any thing which excites my feelings; and, once the lurking devil in me
+   is roused, I lose all command of myself.  I do not recover a good fit
+   of rage for days after.  Mind, I do not by this mean that the ill
+   humour continues, as, on the contrary, that quickly subsides,
+   exhausted by its own violence; but it shakes me terribly, and leaves
+   me low and nervous after.'--Lady Blessington's Conversations, p.142.
+
+That during this time also his irritation and ill temper were increased
+by the mortification of duns, debts, and executions, is on the face of
+Moore's story.  Moore himself relates one incident, which gives some idea
+of the many which may have occurred at these times, in a note on p.215,
+vol. iv., where he speaks of Lord Byron's destroying a favourite old
+watch that had been his companion from boyhood, and gone with him to
+Greece.  'In a fit of vexation and rage, brought upon him by some of
+these humiliating embarrassments, to which he was now almost daily a
+prey, he furiously dashed this watch on the hearth, and ground it to
+pieces with the poker among the ashes.'
+
+It is no wonder, that, with a man of this kind to manage, Lady Byron
+should have clung to the only female companionship she could dare to
+trust in the case, and earnestly desired to retain with her the sister,
+who seemed, more than herself, to have influence over him.
+
+The first letter given by 'The Quarterly,' from Lady Byron to Mrs. Leigh,
+without a date, evidently belongs to this period, when the sister's
+society presented itself as a refuge in her approaching confinement.  Mrs
+Leigh speaks of leaving.  The young wife, conscious that the house
+presents no attractions, and that soon she herself shall be laid by,
+cannot urge Mrs. Leigh's stay as likely to give her any pleasure, but
+only as a comfort to herself.
+
+   'You will think me very foolish; but I have tried two or three times,
+   and cannot talk to you of your departure with a decent visage: so let
+   me say one word in this way to spare my philosophy.  With the
+   expectations which I have, I never will nor can ask you to stay one
+   moment longer than you are inclined to do.  It would [be] the worst
+   return for all I ever received from you.  But in this at least I am
+   "truth itself," when I say, that whatever the situation may be, there
+   is no one whose society is dearer to me, or can contribute more to my
+   happiness.  These feelings will not change under any circumstances,
+   and I should be grieved if you did not understand them.  Should you
+   hereafter condemn me, I shall not love you less.  I will say no more.
+   Judge for yourself about going or staying.  I wish you to consider
+   yourself, if you could be wise enough to do that, for the first time
+   in your life.
+
+                                      'Thine,
+
+                                           'A. I. B.'
+
+   Addressed on the cover, 'To The Hon. Mrs. Leigh.'
+
+This letter not being dated, we have no clue but what we obtain from its
+own internal evidence.  It certainly is not written in Lady Byron's usual
+clear and elegant style; and is, in this respect, in striking contrast to
+all her letters that I have ever seen.
+
+But the notes written by a young woman under such peculiar and
+distressing circumstances must not be judged by the standard of calmer
+hours.
+
+Subsequently to this letter, and during that stormy, irrational period
+when Lord Byron's conduct became daily more and more unaccountable, may
+have come that startling scene in which Lord Byron took every pains to
+convince his wife of improper relations subsisting between himself and
+his sister.
+
+What an utter desolation this must have been to the wife, tearing from
+her the last hold of friendship, and the last refuge to which she had
+clung in her sorrows, may easily be conceived.
+
+In this crisis, it appears that the sister convinced Lady Byron that the
+whole was to be attributed to insanity.  It would be a conviction gladly
+accepted, and bringing infinite relief, although still surrounding her
+path with fearful difficulties.
+
+That such was the case is plainly asserted by Lady Byron in her statement
+published in 1830.  Speaking of her separation, Lady Byron says:--
+
+   'The facts are, I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of my
+   father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816.  Lord Byron had
+   signified to me in writing, Jan. 6, his absolute desire that I should
+   leave London on the earliest day that I could conveniently fix.  It
+   was not safe for me to encounter the fatigues of a journey sooner than
+   the 15th.  Previously to my departure, it had been strongly impressed
+   on my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of insanity.
+
+   'This opinion was in a great measure derived from the communications
+   made to me by his nearest relatives and personal attendant'
+
+Now there was no nearer relative than Mrs. Leigh; and the personal
+attendant was Fletcher.  It was therefore presumably Mrs. Leigh who
+convinced Lady Byron of her husband's insanity.
+
+Lady Byron says, 'It was even represented to me that he was in danger of
+destroying himself.
+
+'With the concurrence of his family, I had consulted with Dr. Baillie, as
+a friend, on Jan. 8, as to his supposed malady.'  Now, Lord Byron's
+written order for her to leave came on Jan. 6.  It appears, then, that
+Lady Byron, acting in concurrence with Mrs. Leigh and others of her
+husband's family, consulted Dr. Baillie, on Jan. 8, as to what she should
+do; the symptoms presented to Dr. Baillie being, evidently, insane hatred
+of his wife on the part of Lord Byron, and a determination to get her out
+of the house.  Lady Byron goes on:--
+
+   'On acquainting him with the state of the case, and with Lord Byron's
+   desire that I should leave London, Dr. Baillie thought my absence
+   might be advisable as an experiment, assuming the fact of mental
+   derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not having had access to Lord Byron,
+   could not pronounce an opinion on that point.  He enjoined, that, in
+   correspondence with Lord Byron, I should avoid all but light and
+   soothing topics.  Under these impressions, I left London, determined
+   to follow the advice given me by Dr. Baillie.  Whatever might have
+   been the nature of Lord Byron's treatment of me from the time of my
+   marriage, yet, supposing him to have been in a state of mental
+   alienation, it was not for me, nor for any person of common humanity,
+   to manifest at that moment a sense of injury.'
+
+It appears, then, that the domestic situation in Byron's house at the
+time of his wife's expulsion was one so grave as to call for family
+counsel; for Lady Byron, generally accurate, speaks in the plural number.
+'His nearest relatives' certainly includes Mrs. Leigh.  'His family'
+includes more.  That some of Lord Byron's own relatives were cognisant of
+facts at this time, and that they took Lady Byron's side, is shown by one
+of his own chance admissions.  In vol. vi. p.394, in a letter on Bowles,
+he says, speaking of this time, 'All my relations, save one, fell from me
+like leaves from a tree in autumn.'  And in Medwin's Conversations he
+says, 'Even my cousin George Byron, who had been brought up with me, and
+whom I loved as a brother, took my wife's part.'  The conduct must have
+been marked in the extreme that led to this result.
+
+We cannot help stopping here to say that Lady Byron's situation at this
+time has been discussed in our days with a want of ordinary human feeling
+that is surprising.  Let any father and mother, reading this, look on
+their own daughter, and try to make the case their own.
+
+After a few short months of married life,--months full of patient
+endurance of the strangest and most unaccountable treatment,--she comes
+to them, expelled from her husband's house, an object of hatred and
+aversion to him, and having to settle for herself the awful question,
+whether he is a dangerous madman or a determined villain.
+
+Such was this young wife's situation.
+
+With a heart at times wrung with compassion for her husband as a helpless
+maniac, and fearful that all may end in suicide, yet compelled to leave
+him, she writes on the road the much-quoted letter, beginning 'Dear
+Duck.'  This is an exaggerated and unnatural letter, it is true, but of
+precisely the character that might be expected from an inexperienced
+young wife when dealing with a husband supposed to be insane.
+
+The next day, she addressed to Augusta this letter:--
+
+   'MY DEAREST A.,--It is my great comfort that you are still in
+   Piccadilly.'
+
+And again, on the 23rd:--
+
+   'DEAREST A.,--I know you feel for me, as I do for you; and perhaps I
+   am better understood than I think.  You have been, ever since I knew
+   you, my best comforter; and will so remain, unless you grow tired of
+   the office,--which may well be.'
+
+We can see here how self-denying and heroic appears to Lady Byron the
+conduct of the sister, who patiently remains to soothe and guide and
+restrain the moody madman, whose madness takes a form, at times, so
+repulsive to every womanly feeling.  She intimates that she should not
+wonder should Augusta grow weary of the office.
+
+Lady Byron continues her statement thus:--
+
+   'When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory, my parents were unacquainted with
+   the existence of any causes likely to destroy my prospects of
+   happiness; and, when I communicated to them the opinion that had been
+   formed concerning Lord Byron's state of mind, they were most anxious
+   to promote his restoration by every means in their power.  They
+   assured those relations that were with him in London that "they would
+   devote their whole case and attention to the alleviation of his
+   malady."'
+
+Here we have a quotation {190a} from a letter written by Lady Milbanke to
+the anxious 'relations' who are taking counsel about Lord Byron in town.
+Lady Byron also adds, in justification of her mother from Lord Byron's
+slanders, 'She had always treated him with an affectionate consideration
+and indulgence, which extended to every little peculiarity of his
+feelings.  Never did an irritating word escape her lips in her whole
+intercourse with him.'
+
+Now comes a remarkable part of Lady Byron's statement:--
+
+   'The accounts given me after I left Lord Byron, by those in constant
+   intercourse with him, {190b} added to those doubts which had before
+   transiently occurred to my mind as to the reality of the alleged
+   disease; and the reports of his medical attendants were far from
+   establishing anything like lunacy.'
+
+When these doubts arose in her mind, it is not natural to suppose that
+they should, at first, involve Mrs. Leigh.  She still appears to Lady
+Byron as the devoted, believing sister, fully convinced of her brother's
+insanity, and endeavouring to restrain and control him.
+
+But if Lord Byron were sane, if the purposes he had avowed to his wife
+were real, he must have lied about his sister in the past, and perhaps
+have the worst intentions for the future.
+
+The horrors of that state of vacillation between the conviction of
+insanity and the commencing conviction of something worse can scarcely be
+told.
+
+At all events, the wife's doubts extend so far that she speaks out to her
+parents.  'UNDER THIS UNCERTAINTY,' says the statement, 'I deemed it
+right to communicate to my parents, that, if I were to consider Lord
+Byron's past conduct as that of a person of sound mind, nothing could
+induce me to return to him.  It therefore appeared expedient, both to
+them and to myself, to consult the ablest advisers.  For that object, and
+also to obtain still further information respecting appearances which
+indicated mental derangement, my mother determined to go to London.  She
+was empowered by me to take legal opinion on a written statement of mine;
+though I then had reasons for reserving a part of the case from the
+knowledge even of my father and mother.'
+
+It is during this time of uncertainty that the next letter to Mrs. Leigh
+may be placed.  It seems to be rather a fragment of a letter than a whole
+one: perhaps it is an extract; in which case it would be desirable, if
+possible, to view it in connection with the remaining text:--
+
+                                          Jan. 25, 1816.
+
+   'MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,--Shall I still be your sister?  I must resign my
+   right to be so considered; but I don't think that will make any
+   difference in the kindness I have so uniformly experienced from you.'
+
+This fragment is not signed, nor finished in any way, but indicates that
+the writer is about to take a decisive step.
+
+On the 17th, as we have seen, Lady Milbanke had written, inviting Lord
+Byron.  Subsequently she went to London to make more particular inquiries
+into his state.  This fragment seems part of a letter from Lady Byron,
+called forth in view of some evidence resulting from her mother's
+observations. {192}
+
+Lady Byron now adds,--
+
+   'Being convinced by the result of these inquiries, and by the tenour
+   of Lord Byron's proceedings, that the notion of insanity was an
+   illusion, I no longer hesitated to authorize such measures as were
+   necessary in order to secure me from ever being again placed in his
+   power.
+
+   'Conformably with this resolution, my father wrote to him, on the 2nd
+   of February, to request an amicable separation.'
+
+The following letter to Mrs. Leigh is dated the day after this
+application, and is in many respects a noticeable one:--
+
+                               'KIRKBY MALLORY, Feb. 3, 1816.
+
+   'MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,--You are desired by your brother to ask if my
+   father has acted with my concurrence in proposing a separation.  He
+   has.  It cannot be supposed, that, in my present distressing
+   situation, I am capable of stating in a detailed manner the reasons
+   which will not only justify this measure, but compel me to take it;
+   and it never can be my wish to remember unnecessarily [sic] those
+   injuries for which, however deep, I feel no resentment.  I will now
+   only recall to Lord Byron's mind his avowed and insurmountable
+   aversion to the married state, and the desire and determination he has
+   expressed ever since its commencement to free himself from that
+   bondage, as finding it quite insupportable, though candidly
+   acknowledging that no effort of duty or affection has been wanting on
+   my part.  He has too painfully convinced me that all these attempts to
+   contribute towards his happiness were wholly useless, and most
+   unwelcome to him.  I enclose this letter to my father, wishing it to
+   receive his sanction.
+
+                              'Ever yours most affectionately,
+
+                                    'A. I. BYRON.'
+
+We observe in this letter that it is written to be shown to Lady Byron's
+father, and receive his sanction; and, as that father was in ignorance of
+all the deeper causes of trouble in the case, it will be seen that the
+letter must necessarily be a reserved one.  This sufficiently accounts
+for the guarded character of the language when speaking of the causes of
+separation.  One part of the letter incidentally overthrows Lord Byron's
+statement, which he always repeated during his life, and which is
+repeated for him now; namely, that his wife forsook him, instead of
+being, as she claims, expelled by him.
+
+She recalls to Lord Byron's mind the 'desire and determination he has
+expressed ever since his marriage to free himself from its bondage.'
+
+This is in perfect keeping with the 'absolute desire,' signified by
+writing, that she should leave his house on the earliest day possible;
+and she places the cause of the separation on his having 'too painfully'
+convinced her that he does not want her--as a wife.
+
+It appears that Augusta hesitates to show this note to her brother.  It
+is bringing on a crisis which she, above all others, would most wish to
+avoid.
+
+In the meantime, Lady Byron receives a letter from Lord Byron, which
+makes her feel it more than ever essential to make the decision final.  I
+have reason to believe that this letter is preserved in Lady Byron's
+papers:--
+
+                                       'Feb. 4, 1816.
+
+   'I hope, my dear A., that you would on no account withhold from your
+   brother the letter which I sent yesterday in answer to yours written
+   by his desire, particularly as one which I have received from himself
+   to-day renders it still more important that he should know the
+   contents of that addressed to you.  I am, in haste and not very well,
+
+                                 'Yours most affectionately,
+
+                                    'A. I. BYRON.'
+
+The last of this series of letters is less like the style of Lady Byron
+than any of them.  We cannot judge whether it is a whole consecutive
+letter, or fragments from a letter, selected and united.  There is a
+great want of that clearness and precision which usually characterised
+Lady Byron's style.  It shows, however, that the decision is made,--a
+decision which she regrets on account of the sister who has tried so long
+to prevent it.
+
+                                 'KIRKBY MALLORY, Feb. 14, 1816.
+
+   'The present sufferings of all may yet be repaid in blessings.  Do not
+   despair absolutely, dearest; and leave me but enough of your interest
+   to afford you any consolation by partaking of that sorrow which I am
+   most unhappy to cause thus unintentionally.  You will be of my opinion
+   hereafter; and at present your bitterest reproach would be forgiven,
+   though Heaven knows you have considered me more than a thousand would
+   have done,--more than anything but my affection for B., one most dear
+   to you, could deserve.  I must not remember these feelings.  Farewell!
+   God bless you from the bottom of my heart!
+
+                                         'A. I. B.'
+
+We are here to consider that Mrs. Leigh has stood to Lady Byron in all
+this long agony as her only confidante and friend; that she has denied
+the charges her brother has made, and referred them to insanity,
+admitting insane attempts upon herself which she has been obliged to
+watch over and control.
+
+Lady Byron has come to the conclusion that Augusta is mistaken as to
+insanity; that there is a real wicked purpose and desire on the part of
+the brother, not as yet believed in by the sister.  She regards the
+sister as one, who, though deceived and blinded, is still worthy of
+confidence and consideration; and so says to her, 'You will be of my
+opinion hereafter.'
+
+She says, 'You have considered me more than a thousand would have done.'
+Mrs. Leigh is, in Lady Byron's eyes, a most abused and innocent woman,
+who, to spare her sister in her delicate situation, has taken on herself
+the whole charge of a maniacal brother, although suffering from him
+language and actions of the most injurious kind.  That Mrs. Leigh did not
+flee the house at once under such circumstances, and wholly decline the
+management of the case, seems to Lady Byron consideration and
+self-sacrifice greater than she can acknowledge.
+
+The knowledge of the whole extent of the truth came to Lady Byron's mind
+at a later period.
+
+We now take up the history from Lushington's letter to Lady Byron,
+published at the close of her statement.
+
+The application to Lord Byron for an act of separation was positively
+refused at first; it being an important part of his policy that all the
+responsibility and insistence should come from his wife, and that he
+should appear forced into it contrary to his will.
+
+Dr. Lushington, however, says to Lady Byron,--
+
+   'I was originally consulted by Lady Noel on your behalf while you were
+   in the country.  The circumstances detailed by her were such as
+   justified a separation; but they were not of that aggravated
+   description as to render such a measure indispensable.  On Lady Noel's
+   representations, I deemed a reconciliation with Lord Byron
+   practicable, and felt most sincerely a wish to aid in effecting it.
+   There was not, on Lady Noel's part, any exaggeration of the facts,
+   nor, so far as I could perceive, any determination to prevent a return
+   to Lord Byron: certainly none was expressed when I spoke of a
+   reconciliation.'
+
+In this crisis, with Lord Byron refusing the separation, with Lushington
+expressing a wish to aid in a reconciliation, and Lady Noel not
+expressing any aversion to it, the whole strain of the dreadful
+responsibility comes upon the wife.
+
+She resolves to ask counsel of her lawyer, in view of a statement of the
+whole case.
+
+Lady Byron is spoken of by Lord Byron (letter 233) as being in town with
+her father on the 29th of February; viz., fifteen days after the date of
+the last letter to Mrs. Leigh.  It must have been about this time, then,
+that she laid her whole case before Lushington; and he gave it a thorough
+examination.
+
+The result was, that Lushington expressed in the most decided terms his
+conviction that reconciliation was impossible.  The language be uses is
+very striking:--
+
+   'When you came to town in about a fortnight, or perhaps more, after my
+   first interview with Lady Noel, I was, for the first time, informed by
+   you of facts utterly unknown, as I have no doubt, to Sir Ralph and
+   Lady Noel.  On receiving this additional information, my opinion was
+   entirely changed.  I considered a reconciliation impossible.  I
+   declared my opinion, and added, that, if such an idea should be
+   entertained, I could not, either professionally or otherwise, take any
+   part towards effecting it.'
+
+It does not appear in this note what effect the lawyer's examination of
+the case had on Lady Byron's mind.  By the expressions he uses, we should
+infer that she may still have been hesitating as to whether a
+reconciliation might not be her duty.
+
+This hesitancy he does away with most decisively, saying, 'A
+reconciliation is impossible;' and, supposing Lady Byron or her friends
+desirous of one, he declares positively that he cannot, either
+professionally as a lawyer or privately as a friend, have anything to do
+with effecting it.
+
+The lawyer, it appears, has drawn, from the facts of the case, inferences
+deeper and stronger than those which presented themselves to the mind of
+the young woman; and he instructs her in the most absolute terms.
+
+Fourteen years after, in 1830, for the first time the world was
+astonished by this declaration from Dr. Lushington, in language so
+pronounced and positive that there could be no mistake.
+
+Lady Byron had stood all these fourteen years slandered by her husband,
+and misunderstood by his friends, when, had she so chosen, this opinion
+of Dr. Lushington's could have been at once made public, which fully
+justified her conduct.
+
+If, as the 'Blackwood' of July insinuates, the story told to Lushington
+was a malignant slander, meant to injure Lord Byron, why did she suppress
+the judgment of her counsel at a time when all the world was on her side,
+and this decision would have been the decisive blow against her husband?
+Why, by sealing the lips of counsel, and of all whom she could influence,
+did she deprive herself finally of the very advantage for which it has
+been assumed she fabricated the story?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.  THE CHARACTER OF THE TWO WITNESSES COMPARED.
+
+
+It will be observed, that, in this controversy, we are confronting two
+opposing stories,--one of Lord and the other of Lady Byron; and the
+statements from each are in point-blank contradiction.
+
+Lord Byron states that his wife deserted him.  Lady Byron states that he
+expelled her, and reminds him, in her letter to Augusta Leigh, that the
+expulsion was a deliberate one, and that he had purposed it from the
+beginning of their marriage.
+
+Lord Byron always stated that he was ignorant why his wife left him, and
+was desirous of her return.  Lady Byron states that he told her that he
+would force her to leave him, and to leave him in such a way that the
+whole blame of the separation should always rest on her, and not on him.
+
+To say nothing of any deeper or darker accusations on either side, here,
+in the very outworks of the story, the two meet point-blank.
+
+In considering two opposing stories, we always, as a matter of fact, take
+into account the character of the witnesses.
+
+If a person be literal and exact in his usual modes of speech, reserved,
+careful, conscientious, and in the habit of observing minutely the minor
+details of time, place, and circumstances, we give weight to his
+testimony from these considerations.  But if a person be proved to have
+singular and exceptional principles with regard to truth; if he be
+universally held by society to be so in the habit of mystification, that
+large allowances must be made for his statements; if his assertions at
+one time contradict those made at another; and if his statements, also,
+sometimes come in collision with those of his best friends, so that, when
+his language is reported, difficulties follow, and explanations are made
+necessary,--all this certainly disqualifies him from being considered a
+trustworthy witness.
+
+All these disqualifications belong in a remarkable degree to Lord Byron,
+on the oft-repeated testimony of his best friends.
+
+We shall first cite the following testimony, given in an article from
+'Under the Crown,' which is written by an early friend and ardent admirer
+of Lord Byron:--
+
+   'Byron had one pre-eminent fault,--a fault which must be considered as
+   deeply criminal by everyone who does not, as I do, believe it to have
+   resulted from monomania.  He had a morbid love of a bad reputation.
+   There was hardly an offence of which he would not, with perfect
+   indifference, accuse himself.  An old schoolfellow who met him on the
+   Continent told me that he would continually write paragraphs against
+   himself in the foreign journals, and delight in their republication by
+   the English newspapers as in the success of a practical joke.  Whenever
+   anybody has related anything discreditable of Byron, assuring me that
+   it must be true, for he heard it from himself, I always felt that he
+   could not have spoken upon worse authority; and that, in all
+   probability, the tale was a pure invention.  If I could remember, and
+   were willing to repeat, the various misdoings which I have from time
+   to time heard him attribute to himself, I could fill a volume.  But I
+   never believed them.  I very soon became aware of this strange
+   idiosyncrasy: it puzzled me to account for it; but there it was, a
+   sort of diseased and distorted vanity.  The same eccentric spirit
+   would induce him to report things which were false with regard to his
+   family, which anybody else would have concealed, though true.  He told
+   me more than once that his father was insane, and killed himself.  I
+   shall never forget the manner in which he first told me this.  While
+   washing his hands, and singing a gay Neapolitan air, he stopped,
+   looked round at me, and said, "There always was madness in the
+   family."  Then, after continuing his washing and his song, he added,
+   as if speaking of a matter of the slightest indifference, "My father
+   cut his throat."  The contrast between the tenour of the subject and
+   the levity of the expression was fearfully painful: it was like a
+   stanza of "Don Juan."  In this instance, I had no doubt that the fact
+   was as he related it; but in speaking of it, only a few years since,
+   to an old lady in whom I had perfect confidence, she assured me that
+   it was not so.  Mr. Byron, who was her cousin, had been extremely
+   wild, but was quite sane, and had died very quietly in his bed.  What
+   Byron's reason could have been for thus calumniating not only himself
+   but the blood which was flowing in his veins, who can divine?  But,
+   for some reason or other, it seemed to be his determined purpose to
+   keep himself unknown to the great body of his fellow-creatures; to
+   present himself to their view in moral masquerade.'
+
+Certainly the character of Lord Byron here given by his friend is not the
+kind to make him a trustworthy witness in any case: on the contrary, it
+seems to show either a subtle delight in falsehood for falsehood's sake,
+or else the wary artifices of a man who, having a deadly secret to
+conceal, employs many turnings and windings to throw the world off the
+scent.  What intriguer, having a crime to cover, could devise a more
+artful course than to send half a dozen absurd stories to the press,
+which should, after a while, be traced back to himself, till the public
+should gradually look on all it heard from him as the result of this
+eccentric humour?
+
+The easy, trifling air with which Lord Byron made to this friend a false
+statement in regard to his father would lead naturally to the inquiry, on
+what other subjects, equally important to the good name of others, he
+might give false testimony with equal indifference.
+
+When Medwin's 'Conversations with Lord Byron' were first published, they
+contained a number of declarations of the noble lord affecting the honour
+and honesty of his friend and publisher Murray.  These appear to have
+been made in the same way as those about his father, and with equal
+indifference.  So serious were the charges, that Mr. Murray's friends
+felt that he ought, in justice to himself, to come forward and confront
+them with the facts as stated in Byron's letters to himself; and in vol.
+x., p.143, of Murray's standard edition, accordingly these false
+statements are confronted with the letters of Lord Byron.  The
+statements, as reported, are of a most material and vital nature,
+relating to Murray's financial honour and honesty, and to his general
+truthfulness and sincerity.  In reply, Murray opposes to them the
+accounts of sums paid for different works, and letters from Byron exactly
+contradicting his own statements as to Murray's character.
+
+The subject, as we have seen, was discussed in 'The Noctes.'  No doubt
+appears to be entertained that Byron made the statements to Medwin; and
+the theory of accounting for them is, that 'Byron was "bamming" him.'
+
+It seems never to have occurred to any of these credulous gentlemen, who
+laughed at others for being 'bammed,' that Byron might be doing the very
+same thing by themselves.  How many of his so-called packages sent to
+Lady Byron were real packages, and how many were mystifications?  We
+find, in two places at least in his Memoir, letters to Lady Byron,
+written and shown to others, which, he says, were never sent by him.  He
+told Lady Blessington that he was in the habit of writing to her
+constantly.  Was this 'bamming'?  Was he 'bamming,' also, when he told
+the world that Lady Byron suddenly deserted him, quite to his surprise,
+and that he never, to his dying day, could find out why?
+
+Lady Blessington relates, that, in one of his conversations with her, he
+entertained her by repeating epigrams and lampoons, in which many of his
+friends were treated with severity.  She inquired of him, in case he
+should die, and such proofs of his friendship come before the public,
+what would be the feelings of these friends, who had supposed themselves
+to stand so high in his good graces.  She says,--
+
+   '"That," said Byron, "is precisely one of the ideas that most amuses
+   me.  I often fancy the rage and humiliation of my quondam friends in
+   hearing the truth, at least from me, for the first time, and when I am
+   beyond the reach of their malice. . . .  What grief," continued Byron,
+   laughing, "could resist the charges of ugliness, dulness, or any of
+   the thousand nameless defects, personal or mental, 'that flesh is heir
+   to,' when reprisal or recantation was impossible? . . .  People are in
+   such daily habits of commenting on the defects of friends, that they
+   are unconscious of the unkindness of it. . . Now, I write down as well
+   as speak my sentiments of those who think they have gulled me; and I
+   only wish, in case I die before them, that I might return to witness
+   the effects my posthumous opinions of them are likely to produce in
+   their minds.  What good fun this would be! . . .  You don't seem to
+   value this as you ought," said Byron with one of his sardonic smiles,
+   seeing I looked, as I really felt, surprised at his avowed
+   insincerity.  "I feel the same pleasure in anticipating the rage and
+   mortification of my soi-disant friends at the discovery of my real
+   sentiments of them, that a miser may be supposed to feel while making
+   a will that will disappoint all the expectants that have been toadying
+   him for years.  Then how amusing it will be to compare my posthumous
+   with my previously given opinions, the one throwing ridicule on the
+   other!"'
+
+It is asserted, in a note to 'The Noctes,' that Byron, besides his
+Autobiography, prepared a voluminous dictionary of all his friends and
+acquaintances, in which brief notes of their persons and character were
+given, with his opinion of them.  It was not considered that the
+publication of this would add to the noble lord's popularity; and it has
+never appeared.
+
+In Hunt's Life of Byron, there is similar testimony.  Speaking of Byron's
+carelessness in exposing his friends' secrets, and showing or giving away
+their letters, he says,--
+
+   'If his five hundred confidants, by a reticence as remarkable as his
+   laxity, had not kept his secrets better than he did himself, the very
+   devil might have been played with I don't know how many people.  But
+   there was always this saving reflection to be made, that the man who
+   could be guilty of such extravagances for the sake of making an
+   impression might be guilty of exaggeration, or inventing what
+   astonished you; and indeed, though he was a speaker of the truth on
+   ordinary occasions,--that is to say, he did not tell you he had seen a
+   dozen horses when he had seen only two,--yet, as he professed not to
+   value the truth when in the way of his advantage (and there was
+   nothing he thought more to his advantage than making you stare at
+   him), the persons who were liable to suffer from his incontinence had
+   all the right in the world to the benefit of this consideration.'
+   {205a}
+
+With a person of such mental and moral habits as to truth, the inquiry
+always must be, Where does mystification end, and truth begin?
+
+If a man is careless about his father's reputation for sanity, and
+reports him a crazy suicide; if he gaily accuses his publisher and good
+friend of double-dealing, shuffling, and dishonesty; if he tells stories
+about Mrs. Clermont, {205b} to which his sister offers a public
+refutation,--is it to be supposed that he will always tell the truth
+about his wife, when the world is pressing him hard, and every instinct
+of self-defence is on the alert?
+
+And then the ingenuity that could write and publish false documents about
+himself, that they might reappear in London papers,--to what other
+accounts might it not be turned?  Might it not create documents, invent
+statements, about his wife as well as himself?
+
+The document so ostentatiously given to M. G. Lewis 'for circulation
+among friends in England' was a specimen of what the Noctes Club would
+call 'bamming.'
+
+If Byron wanted a legal investigation, why did he not take it in the
+first place, instead of signing the separation?  If he wanted to cancel
+it, as he said in this document, why did he not go to London, and enter a
+suit for the restitution of conjugal rights, or a suit in chancery to get
+possession of his daughter?  That this was in his mind, passages in
+Medwin's 'Conversations' show.  He told Lady Blessington also that he
+might claim his daughter in chancery at any time.
+
+Why did he not do it?  Either of these two steps would have brought on
+that public investigation he so longed for.  Can it be possible that all
+the friends who passed this private document from hand to hand never
+suspected that they were being 'bammed' by it?
+
+But it has been universally assumed, that, though Byron was thus
+remarkably given to mystification, yet all his statements in regard to
+this story are to be accepted, simply because he makes them.  Why must we
+accept them, any more than his statements as to Murray or his own father?
+
+So we constantly find Lord Byron's incidental statements coming in
+collision with those of others: for example, in his account of his
+marriage, he tells Medwin that Lady Byron's maid was put between his
+bride and himself, on the same seat, in the wedding journey.  The lady's
+maid herself, Mrs. Mimms, says she was sent before them to Halnaby, and
+was there to receive them when they alighted.
+
+He said of Lady Byron's mother, 'She always detested me, and had not the
+decency to conceal it in her own house.  Dining with her one day, I broke
+a tooth, and was in great pain; which I could not help showing.  "It will
+do you good," said Lady Noel; "I am glad of it!"'
+
+Lady Byron says, speaking of her mother, 'She always treated him with an
+affectionate consideration and indulgence, which extended to every little
+peculiarity of his feelings.  Never did an irritating word escape her.'
+
+Lord Byron states that the correspondence between him and Lady Byron,
+after his refusal, was first opened by her.  Lady Byron's friends deny
+the statement, and assert that the direct contrary is the fact.
+
+Thus we see that Lord Byron's statements are directly opposed to those of
+his family in relation to his father; directly against Murray's accounts,
+and his own admission to Murray; directly against the statement of the
+lady's maid as to her position in the journey; directly against Mrs.
+Leigh's as to Mrs. Clermont, and against Lady Byron as to her mother.
+
+We can see, also, that these misstatements were so fully perceived by the
+men of his times, that Medwin's 'Conversations' were simply laughed at as
+an amusing instance of how far a man might be made the victim of a
+mystification.  Christopher North thus sentences the book:--
+
+   'I don't mean to call Medwin a liar . . .  The captain lies, sir, but
+   it is under a thousand mistakes.  Whether Byron bammed him, or he, by
+   virtue of his own egregious stupidity, was the sole and sufficient
+   bammifier of himself, I know not; neither greatly do I care.  This
+   much is certain, . . . that the book throughout is full of things that
+   were not, and most resplendently deficient quoad the things that
+   were.'
+
+Yet it is on Medwin's 'Conversations' alone that many of the magazine
+assertions in regard to Lady Byron are founded.
+
+It is on that authority that Lady Byron is accused of breaking open her
+husband's writing-desk in his absence, and sending the letters she found
+there to the husband of a lady compromised by them; and likewise that
+Lord Byron is declared to have paid back his wife's ten-thousand-pound
+wedding portion, and doubled it.  Moore makes no such statements; and his
+remarks about Lord Byron's use of his wife's money are unmistakable
+evidence to the contrary.  Moore, although Byron's ardent partisan, was
+too well informed to make assertions with regard to him, which, at that
+time, it would have been perfectly easy to refute.
+
+All these facts go to show that Lord Byron's character for accuracy or
+veracity was not such as to entitle him to ordinary confidence as a
+witness, especially in a case where he had the strongest motives for
+misstatement.
+
+And if we consider that the celebrated Autobiography was the finished,
+careful work of such a practised 'mystifier,' who can wonder that it
+presented a web of such intermingled truth and lies that there was no
+such thing as disentangling it, and pointing out where falsehood ended
+and truth began?
+
+But in regard to Lady Byron, what has been the universal impression of
+the world?  It has been alleged against her that she was a precise,
+straightforward woman, so accustomed to plain, literal dealings, that she
+could not understand the various mystifications of her husband; and from
+that cause arose her unhappiness.  Byron speaks, in 'The Sketch,' of her
+peculiar truthfulness; and even in the 'Clytemnestra' poem, when accusing
+her of lying, he speaks of her as departing from
+
+   'The early truth that was her proper praise.'
+
+Lady Byron's careful accuracy as to dates, to time, place, and
+circumstances, will probably be vouched for by all the very large number
+of persons whom the management of her extended property and her works of
+benevolence brought to act as co-operators or agents with her.  She was
+not a person in the habit of making exaggerated or ill-considered
+statements.  Her published statement of 1830 is clear, exact, accurate,
+and perfectly intelligible.  The dates are carefully ascertained and
+stated, the expressions are moderate, and all the assertions firm and
+perfectly definite.
+
+It therefore seems remarkable that the whole reasoning on this Byron
+matter has generally been conducted by assuming all Lord Byron's
+statements to be true, and requiring all Lady Byron's statements to be
+sustained by other evidence.
+
+If Lord Byron asserts that his wife deserted him, the assertion is
+accepted without proof; but, if Lady Byron asserts that he ordered her to
+leave, that requires proof.  Lady Byron asserts that she took counsel, on
+this order of Lord Byron, with his family friends and physician, under
+the idea that it originated in insanity.  The 'Blackwood' asks, "What
+family friends?' says it doesn't know of any; and asks proof.
+
+If Lord Byron asserts that he always longed for a public investigation of
+the charges against him, the 'Quarterly' and 'Blackwood' quote the saying
+with ingenuous confidence.  They are obliged to admit that he refused to
+stand that public test; that he signed the deed of separation rather than
+meet it.  They know, also, that he could have at any time instituted
+suits against Lady Byron that would have brought the whole matter into
+court, and that he did not.  Why did he not?  The 'Quarterly' simply
+intimates that such suits would have been unpleasant.  Why?  On account
+of personal delicacy?  The man that wrote 'Don Juan,' and furnished the
+details of his wedding-night, held back from clearing his name by
+delicacy!  It is astonishing to what extent this controversy has
+consisted in simply repeating Lord Byron's assertions over and over
+again, and calling the result proof.
+
+Now, we propose a different course.  As Lady Byron is not stated by her
+warm admirers to have had any monomania for speaking untruths on any
+subject, we rank her value as a witness at a higher rate than Lord
+Byron's.  She never accused her parents of madness or suicide, merely to
+make a sensation; never 'bammed' an acquaintance by false statements
+concerning the commercial honour of anyone with whom she was in business
+relations; never wrote and sent to the press as a clever jest false
+statements about herself; and never, in any other ingenious way, tampered
+with truth.  We therefore hold it to be a mere dictate of reason and
+common sense, that, in all cases where her statements conflict with her
+husband's, hers are to be taken as the more trustworthy.
+
+The 'London Quarterly,' in a late article, distinctly repudiates Lady
+Byron's statements as sources of evidence, and throughout quotes
+statements of Lord Byron as if they had the force of self-evident
+propositions.  We consider such a course contrary to common sense as well
+as common good manners.
+
+The state of the case is just this: If Lord Byron did not make false
+statements on this subject it was certainly an exception to his usual
+course.  He certainly did make such on a great variety of other subjects.
+By his own showing, he had a peculiar pleasure in falsifying language,
+and in misleading and betraying even his friends.
+
+But, if Lady Byron gave false witness upon this subject, it was an
+exception to the whole course of her life.
+
+The habits of her mind, the government of her conduct, her life-long
+reputation, all were those of a literal, exact truthfulness.
+
+The accusation of her being untruthful was first brought forward by her
+husband in the 'Clytemnestra' poem, in the autumn of 1816; but it never
+was publicly circulated till after his death, and it was first formally
+made the basis of a published attack on Lady Byron in the July
+'Blackwood' of 1869.  Up to that time, we look in vain through current
+literature for any indications that the world regarded Lady Byron
+otherwise than as a cold, careful, prudent woman, who made no assertions,
+and had no confidants.  When she spoke in 1830, it is perfectly evident
+that Christopher North and his circle believed what she said, though
+reproving her for saying it at all.
+
+The 'Quarterly' goes on to heap up a number of vague assertions,--that
+Lady Byron, about the time of her separation, made a confidant of a young
+officer; that she told the clergyman of Ham of some trials with Lord
+Ockham; and that she told stories of different things at different times.
+
+All this is not proof: it is mere assertion, and assertion made to
+produce prejudice.  It is like raising a whirlwind of sand to blind the
+eyes that are looking for landmarks.  It is quite probable Lady Byron
+told different stories about Lord Byron at various times.  No woman could
+have a greater variety of stories to tell; and no woman ever was so
+persecuted and pursued and harassed, both by public literature and
+private friendship, to say something.  She had plenty of causes for a
+separation, without the fatal and final one.  In her conversations with
+Lady Anne Barnard, for example, she gives reasons enough for a
+separation, though none of them are the chief one.  It is not different
+stories, but contradictory stories, that must be relied on to disprove
+the credibility of a witness.  The 'Quarterly' has certainly told a great
+number of different stories,--stories which may prove as irreconcilable
+with each other as any attributed to Lady Byron; but its denial of all
+weight to her testimony is simply begging the whole question under
+consideration.
+
+A man gives testimony about the causes of a railroad accident, being the
+only eye-witness.
+
+The opposing counsel begs, whatever else you do, you will not admit that
+man's testimony.  You ask, 'Why?  Has he ever been accused of want of
+veracity on other subjects?'--'No: he has stood high as a man of probity
+and honour for years.'--'Why, then, throw out his testimony?'
+
+'Because he lies in this instance,' says the adversary: 'his testimony
+does not agree with this and that.'--'Pardon me, that is the very point
+in question,' say you: 'we expect to prove that it does agree with this
+and that.'
+
+Because certain letters of Lady Byron's do not agree with the
+'Quarterly's' theory of the facts of the separation, it at once assumes
+that she is an untruthful witness, and proposes to throw out her evidence
+altogether.
+
+We propose, on the contrary, to regard Lady Byron's evidence with all the
+attention due to the statement of a high-minded conscientious person,
+never in any other case accused of violation of truth; we also propose to
+show it to be in strict agreement with all well-authenticated facts and
+documents; and we propose to treat Lord Byron's evidence as that of a man
+of great subtlety, versed in mystification and delighting in it, and who,
+on many other subjects, not only deceived, but gloried in deception; and
+then we propose to show that it contradicts well-established facts and
+received documents.
+
+One thing more we have to say concerning the laws of evidence in regard
+to documents presented in this investigation.
+
+This is not a London West-End affair, but a grave historical inquiry, in
+which the whole English-speaking world are interested to know the truth.
+
+As it is now too late to have the securities of a legal trial, certainly
+the rules of historical evidence should be strictly observed.  All
+important documents should be presented in an entire state, with a plain
+and open account of their history,--who had them, where they were found,
+and how preserved.
+
+There have been most excellent, credible, and authentic documents
+produced in this case; and, as a specimen of them, we shall mention Lord
+Lindsay's letter, and the journal and letter it authenticates.  Lord
+Lindsay at once comes forward, gives his name boldly, gives the history
+of the papers he produces, shows how they came to be in his hands, why
+never produced before, and why now.  We feel confidence at once.
+
+But in regard to the important series of letters presented as Lady
+Byron's, this obviously proper course has not been pursued.  Though
+assumed to be of the most critical importance, no such distinct history
+of them was given in the first instance.  The want of such evidence being
+noticed by other papers, the 'Quarterly' appears hurt that the high
+character of the magazine has not been a sufficient guarantee; and still
+deals in vague statements that the letters have been freely circulated,
+and that two noblemen of the highest character would vouch for them if
+necessary.
+
+In our view, it is necessary.  These noblemen should imitate Lord
+Lindsay's example,--give a fair account of these letters, under their own
+names; and then, we would add, it is needful for complete satisfaction to
+have the letters entire, and not in fragments.
+
+The 'Quarterly' gave these letters with the evident implication that they
+are entirely destructive to Lady Byron's character as a witness.  Now,
+has that magazine much reason to be hurt at even an insinuation on its
+own character when making such deadly assaults on that of another?  The
+individuals who bring forth documents that they suppose to be deadly to
+the character of a noble person, always in her generation held to be
+eminent for virtue, certainly should not murmur at being called upon to
+substantiate these documents in the manner usually expected in historical
+investigations.
+
+We have shown that these letters do not contradict, but that they
+perfectly confirm the facts, and agree with the dates in Lady Byron's
+published statements of 1830; and this is our reason for deeming them
+authentic.
+
+These considerations with regard to the manner of conducting the inquiry
+seem so obviously proper, that we cannot but believe that they will
+command a serious attention.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.  THE DIRECT ARGUMENT TO PROVE THE CRIME.
+
+
+We shall now proceed to state the argument against Lord Byron.
+
+1st, There is direct evidence that Lord Byron was guilty of some unusual
+immorality.
+
+The evidence is not, as the 'Blackwood' says, that Lushington yielded
+assent to the ex parte statement of a client; nor, as the 'Quarterly'
+intimates, that he was affected by the charms of an attractive young
+woman.
+
+The first evidence of it is the fact that Lushington and Romilly offered
+to take the case into court, and make there a public exhibition of the
+proofs on which their convictions were founded.
+
+2nd, It is very strong evidence of this fact, that Lord Byron, while
+loudly declaring that he wished to know with what he was charged,
+declined this open investigation, and, rather than meet it, signed a
+paper which he had before refused to sign.
+
+3rd, It is also strong evidence of this fact, that although secretly
+declaring to all his intimate friends that he still wished open
+investigation in a court of justice, and affirming his belief that his
+character was being ruined for want of it, he never afterwards took the
+means to get it.  Instead of writing a private handbill, he might have
+come to England and entered a suit; and he did not do it.
+
+That Lord Byron was conscious of a great crime is further made probable
+by the peculiar malice he seemed to bear to his wife's legal counsel.
+
+If there had been nothing to fear in that legal investigation wherewith
+they threatened him, why did he not only flee from it, but regard with a
+peculiar bitterness those who advised and proposed it?  To an innocent
+man falsely accused, the certainties of law are a blessing and a refuge.
+Female charms cannot mislead in a court of justice; and the atrocities of
+rumour are there sifted, and deprived of power.  A trial is not a threat
+to an innocent man: it is an invitation, an opportunity.  Why, then, did
+he hate Sir Samuel Romilly, so that he exulted like a fiend over his
+tragical death?  The letter in which he pours forth this malignity was so
+brutal, that Moore was obliged, by the general outcry of society, to
+suppress it.  Is this the language of an innocent man who has been
+offered a fair trial under his country's laws? or of a guilty man, to
+whom the very idea of public trial means public exposure?
+
+4th, It is probable that the crime was the one now alleged, because that
+was the most important crime charged against him by rumour at the period.
+This appears by the following extract of a letter from Shelley, furnished
+by the 'Quarterly,' dated Bath, Sept. 29, 1816:--
+
+   'I saw Kinnaird, and had a long talk with him.  He informed me that
+   Lady Byron was now in perfect health; that she was living with your
+   sister.  I felt much pleasure from this intelligence.  I consider the
+   latter part of it as affording a decisive contradiction to the only
+   important calumny that ever was advanced against you.  On this ground,
+   at least, it will become the world hereafter to be silent.'
+
+It appears evident here that the charge of improper intimacy with his
+sister was, in the mind of Shelley, the only important one that had yet
+been made against Lord Byron.
+
+It is fairly inferable, from Lord Byron's own statements, that his family
+friends believed this charge.  Lady Byron speaks, in her statement, of
+'nearest relatives' and family friends who were cognizant of Lord Byron's
+strange conduct at the time of the separation; and Lord Byron, in the
+letter to Bowles, before quoted, says that every one of his relations,
+except his sister, fell from him in this crisis like leaves from a tree
+in autumn.  There was, therefore, not only this report, but such
+appearances in support of it as convinced those nearest to the scene, and
+best apprised of the facts; so that they fell from him entirely,
+notwithstanding the strong influence of family feeling.  The Guiccioli
+book also mentions this same allegation as having arisen from
+peculiarities in Lord Byron's manner of treating his sister:--
+
+   'This deep, fraternal affection assumed at times, under the influence
+   of his powerful genius, and under exceptional circumstances, an almost
+   too passionate expression, which opened a fresh field to his enemies.'
+   {219}
+
+It appears, then, that there was nothing in the character of Lord Byron
+and of his sister, as they appeared before their generation, that
+prevented such a report from arising: on the contrary, there was
+something in their relations that made it seem probable.  And it appears
+that his own family friends were so affected by it, that they, with one
+accord, deserted him.  The 'Quarterly' presents the fact that Lady Byron
+went to visit Mrs. Leigh at this time, as triumphant proof that she did
+not then believe it.  Can the 'Quarterly' show just what Lady Byron's
+state of mind was, or what her motives were, in making that visit?
+
+The 'Quarterly' seems to assume, that no woman, without gross hypocrisy,
+can stand by a sister proven to have been guilty.  We can appeal on this
+subject to all women.  We fearlessly ask any wife, 'Supposing your
+husband and sister were involved together in an infamous crime, and that
+you were the mother of a young daughter whose life would be tainted by a
+knowledge of that crime, what would be your wish?  Would you wish to
+proclaim it forthwith? or would you wish quietly to separate from your
+husband, and to cover the crime from the eye of man?'
+
+It has been proved that Lady Byron did not reveal this even to her
+nearest relatives.  It is proved that she sealed the mouths of her
+counsel, and even of servants, so effectually, that they remain sealed
+even to this day.  This is evidence that she did not wish the thing
+known.  It is proved also, that, in spite of her secrecy with her parents
+and friends, the rumour got out, and was spoken of by Shelley as the only
+important one.
+
+Now, let us see how this note, cited by the 'Quarterly,' confirms one of
+Lady Byron's own statements.  She says to Lady Anne Barnard,--
+
+   'I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to injure Lord
+   Byron in any way; for, though he would not suffer me to remain his
+   wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and it was from
+   considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations by which my
+   own conduct might have been more fully justified.'
+
+How did Lady Byron silence accusations?  First, by keeping silence to her
+nearest relatives; second, by shutting the mouths of servants; third, by
+imposing silence on her friends,--as Lady Anne Barnard; fourth, by
+silencing her legal counsel; fifth, and most entirely, by treating Mrs.
+Leigh, before the world, with unaltered kindness.  In the midst of the
+rumours, Lady Byron went to visit her; and Shelley says that the movement
+was effectual.  Can the 'Quarterly' prove that, at this time, Mrs. Leigh
+had not confessed all, and thrown herself on Lady Byron's mercy?
+
+It is not necessary to suppose great horror and indignation on the part
+of Lady Byron.  She may have regarded her sister as the victim of a most
+singularly powerful tempter.  Lord Byron, as she knew, had tried to
+corrupt her own morals and faith.  He had obtained a power over some
+women, even in the highest circles in England, which had led them to
+forego the usual decorums of their sex, and had given rise to great
+scandals.  He was a being of wonderful personal attractions.  He had not
+only strong poetical, but also strong logical power.  He was daring in
+speculation, and vigorous in sophistical argument; beautiful, dazzling,
+and possessed of magnetic power of fascination.  His sister had been kind
+and considerate to Lady Byron when Lord Byron was brutal and cruel.  She
+had been overcome by him, as a weaker nature sometimes sinks under the
+force of a stronger one; and Lady Byron may really have considered her to
+be more sinned against than sinning.
+
+Lord Byron, if we look at it rightly, did not corrupt Mrs. Leigh any more
+than he did the whole British public.  They rebelled at the immorality of
+his conduct and the obscenity of his writings; and he resolved that they
+should accept both.  And he made them do it.  At first, they execrated
+'Don Juan.'  Murray was afraid to publish it.  Women were determined not
+to read it.  In 1819, Dr. William Maginn of the Noctes wrote a song
+against it in the following virtuous strain:--
+
+   'Be "Juan," then, unseen, unknown;
+      It must, or we shall rue it.
+   We may have virtue of our own:
+      Ah! why should we undo it?
+   The treasured faith of days long past
+      We still would prize o'er any,
+   And grieve to hear the ribald jeer
+      Of scamps like Don Giovanni.'
+
+Lord Byron determined to conquer the virtuous scruples of the Noctes
+Club; and so we find this same Dr. William Maginn, who in 1819 wrote so
+valiantly, in 1822 declaring that he would rather have written a page of
+'Don Juan' than a ton of 'Childe Harold.'  All English morals were, in
+like manner, formally surrendered to Lord Byron.  Moore details his
+adulteries in Venice with unabashed particularity: artists send for
+pictures of his principal mistresses; the literary world call for
+biographical sketches of their points; Moore compares his wife and his
+last mistress in a neatly-turned sentence; and yet the professor of
+morals in Edinburgh University recommends the biography as pure, and
+having no mud in it.  The mistress is lionized in London; and in 1869 is
+introduced to the world of letters by 'Blackwood,' and bid, 'without a
+blush, to say she loved'--
+
+This much being done to all England, it is quite possible that a woman
+like Lady Byron, standing silently aside and surveying the course of
+things, may have thought that Mrs. Leigh was no more seduced than all the
+rest of the world, and have said as we feel disposed to say of that
+generation, and of a good many in this, 'Let him that is without sin
+among you cast the first stone.'
+
+The peculiar bitterness of remorse expressed in his works by Lord Byron
+is a further evidence that he had committed an unusual crime.  We are
+aware that evidence cannot be drawn in this manner from an author's works
+merely, if unsupported by any external probability.  For example, the
+subject most frequently and powerfully treated by Hawthorne is the
+influence of a secret, unconfessed crime on the soul: nevertheless, as
+Hawthorne is well known to have always lived a pure and regular life,
+nobody has ever suspected him of any greater sin than a vigorous
+imagination.  But here is a man believed guilty of an uncommon immorality
+by the two best lawyers in England, and threatened with an open exposure,
+which he does not dare to meet.  The crime is named in society; his own
+relations fall away from him on account of it; it is only set at rest by
+the heroic conduct of his wife.  Now, this man is stated by many of his
+friends to have had all the appearance of a man secretly labouring under
+the consciousness of crime.  Moore speaks of this propensity in the
+following language:--
+
+   'I have known him more than once, as we sat together after dinner, and
+   he was a little under the influence of wine, to fall seriously into
+   this dark, self-accusing mood, and throw out hints of his past life
+   with an air of gloom and mystery designed evidently to awaken
+   curiosity and interest.'
+
+Moore says that it was his own custom to dispel these appearances by
+ridicule, to which his friend was keenly alive.  And he goes on to say,--
+
+   'It has sometimes occurred to me, that the occult causes of his lady's
+   separation from him, round which herself and her legal advisers have
+   thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more than some
+   imposture of this kind, some dimly-hinted confession of undefined
+   horror, which, though intended by the relater to mystify and surprise,
+   the hearer so little understood as to take in sober seriousness.'
+   {225}
+
+All we have to say is, that Lord Byron's conduct in this respect is
+exactly what might have been expected if he had a crime on his
+conscience.
+
+The energy of remorse and despair expressed in 'Manfred' were so
+appalling and so vividly personal, that the belief was universal on the
+Continent that the experience was wrought out of some actual crime.
+Goethe expressed this idea, and had heard a murder imputed to Byron as
+the cause.
+
+The allusion to the crime and consequences of incest is so plain in
+'Manfred,' that it is astonishing that any one can pretend, as Galt does,
+that it had any other application.
+
+The hero speaks of the love between himself and the imaginary being whose
+spirit haunts him as having been the deadliest sin, and one that has,
+perhaps, caused her eternal destruction.
+
+   'What is she now?  A sufferer for my sins;
+   A thing I dare not think upon.'
+
+He speaks of her blood as haunting him, and as being
+
+      'My blood,--the pure, warm stream
+   That ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours
+   When we were in our youth, and had one heart,
+   And loved each other as we should not love.'
+
+This work was conceived in the commotion of mind immediately following
+his separation.  The scenery of it was sketched in a journal sent to his
+sister at the time.
+
+In letter 377, defending the originality of the conception, and showing
+that it did not arise from reading 'Faust,' he says,--
+
+   'It was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, more than
+   Faustus, that made me write "Manfred."'
+
+In letter 288, speaking of the various accounts given by critics of the
+origin of the story, he says,--
+
+   'The conjecturer is out, and knows nothing of the matter.  I had a
+   better origin than he could devise or divine for the soul of him.'
+
+In letter 299, he says:--
+
+'As to the germs of "Manfred," they may be found in the journal I sent to
+Mrs. Leigh, part of which you saw.'
+
+It may be said, plausibly, that Lord Byron, if conscious of this crime,
+would not have expressed it in his poetry.  But his nature was such that
+he could not help it.  Whatever he wrote that had any real power was
+generally wrought out of self; and, when in a tumult of emotion, he could
+not help giving glimpses of the cause.  It appears that he did know that
+he had been accused of incest, and that Shelley thought that accusation
+the only really important one; and yet, sensitive as he was to blame and
+reprobation, he ran upon this very subject most likely to re-awaken
+scandal.
+
+But Lord Byron's strategy was always of the bold kind.  It was the plan
+of the fugitive, who, instead of running away, stations himself so near
+to danger, that nobody would ever think of looking for him there.  He
+published passionate verses to his sister on this principle.  He imitated
+the security of an innocent man in every thing but the unconscious energy
+of the agony which seized him when he gave vent to his nature in poetry.
+The boldness of his strategy is evident through all his life.  He began
+by charging his wife with the very cruelty and deception which he was
+himself practising.  He had spread a net for her feet, and he accused her
+of spreading a net for his.  He had placed her in a position where she
+could not speak, and then leisurely shot arrows at her; and he
+represented her as having done the same by him.  When he attacked her in
+'Don Juan,' and strove to take from her the very protection {227}of
+womanly sacredness by putting her name into the mouth of every ribald, he
+did a bold thing, and he knew it.  He meant to do a bold thing.  There
+was a general outcry against it; and he fought it down, and gained his
+point.  By sheer boldness and perseverance, he turned the public from his
+wife, and to himself, in the face of their very groans and protests.  His
+'Manfred' and his 'Cain' were parts of the same game.  But the
+involuntary cry of remorse and despair pierced even through his own
+artifices, in a manner that produced a conviction of reality.
+
+His evident fear and hatred of his wife were other symptoms of crime.
+There was no apparent occasion for him to hate her.  He admitted that she
+had been bright, amiable, good, agreeable; that her marriage had been a
+very uncomfortable one; and he said to Madame de Stael, that he did not
+doubt she thought him deranged.  Why, then, did he hate her for wanting
+to live peaceably by herself?  Why did he so fear her, that not one year
+of his life passed without his concocting and circulating some public or
+private accusation against her?  She, by his own showing, published none
+against him.  It is remarkable, that, in all his zeal to represent
+himself injured, he nowhere quotes a single remark from Lady Byron, nor a
+story coming either directly or indirectly from her or her family.  He is
+in a fever in Venice, not from what she has spoken, but because she has
+sealed the lips of her counsel, and because she and her family do not
+speak: so that he professes himself utterly ignorant what form her
+allegations against him may take.  He had heard from Shelley that his
+wife silenced the most important calumny by going to make Mrs. Leigh a
+visit; and yet he is afraid of her,--so afraid, that he tells Moore he
+expects she will attack him after death, and charges him to defend his
+grave.
+
+Now, if Lord Byron knew that his wife had a deadly secret that she could
+tell, all this conduct is explicable: it is in the ordinary course of
+human nature.  Men always distrust those who hold facts by which they can
+be ruined.  They fear them; they are antagonistic to them; they cannot
+trust them.  The feeling of Falkland to Caleb Williams, as portrayed in
+Godwin's masterly sketch, is perfectly natural, and it is exactly
+illustrative of what Byron felt for his wife.  He hated her for having
+his secret; and, so far as a human being could do it, he tried to destroy
+her character before the world, that she might not have the power to
+testify against him.  If we admit this solution, Byron's conduct is at
+least that of a man who is acting as men ordinarily would act under such
+circumstances: if we do not, he is acting like a fiend.  Let us look at
+admitted facts.  He married his wife without love, in a gloomy,
+melancholy, morose state of mind.  The servants testify to strange,
+unaccountable treatment of her immediately after marriage; such that her
+confidential maid advises her return to her parents.  In Lady Byron's
+letter to Mrs. Leigh, she reminds Lord Byron that he always expressed a
+desire and determination to free himself from the marriage.  Lord Byron
+himself admits to Madame de Stael that his behaviour was such, that his
+wife must have thought him insane.  Now we are asked to believe, that
+simply because, under these circumstances, Lady Byron wished to live
+separate from her husband, he hated and feared her so that he could never
+let her alone afterwards; that he charged her with malice, slander,
+deceit, and deadly intentions against himself, merely out of spite,
+because she preferred not to live with him.  This last view of the case
+certainly makes Lord Byron more unaccountably wicked than the other.
+
+The first supposition shows him to us as a man in an agony of
+self-preservation; the second as a fiend, delighting in gratuitous deceit
+and cruelty.
+
+Again: a presumption of this crime appears in Lord Byron's admission, in
+a letter to Moore, that he had an illegitimate child born before he left
+England, and still living at the time.
+
+In letter 307, to Mr. Moore, under date Venice, Feb. 2, 1818, Byron says,
+speaking of Moore's loss of a child,--
+
+   'I know how to feel with you, because I am quite wrapped up in my own
+   children.  Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an
+   illegitimate since [since Ada's birth] to say nothing of one before;
+   and I look forward to one of these as the pillar of my old age,
+   supposing that I ever reach, as I hope I never shall, that desolating
+   period.'
+
+The illegitimate child that he had made to himself since Ada's birth was
+Allegra, born about nine or ten months after the separation.  The other
+illegitimate alluded to was born before, and, as the reader sees, was
+spoken of as still living.
+
+Moore appears to be puzzled to know who this child can be, and
+conjectures that it may possibly be the child referred to in an early
+poem, written, while a schoolboy of nineteen, at Harrow.
+
+On turning back to the note referred to, we find two things: first, that
+the child there mentioned was not claimed by Lord Byron as his own, but
+that he asked his mother to care for it as belonging to a schoolmate now
+dead; second, that the infant died shortly after, and, consequently,
+could not be the child mentioned in this letter.
+
+Now, besides this fact, that Lord Byron admitted a living illegitimate
+child born before Ada, we place this other fact, that there was a child
+in England which was believed to be his by those who had every
+opportunity of knowing.
+
+On this subject we shall cite a passage from a letter recently received
+by us from England, and written by a person who appears well informed on
+the subject of his letter:--
+
+   'The fact is, the incest was first committed, and the child of it born
+   before, shortly before, the Byron marriage.  The child (a daughter)
+   must not be confounded with the natural daughter of Lord Byron, born
+   about a year after his separation.
+
+   'The history, more or less, of that child of incest, is known to many;
+   for in Lady Byron's attempts to watch over her, and rescue her from
+   ruin, she was compelled to employ various agents at different times.'
+
+This letter contains a full recognition, by an intelligent person in
+England, of a child corresponding well with Lord Byron's declaration of
+an illegitimate, born before he left England.
+
+Up to this point, we have, then, the circumstantial evidence against Lord
+Byron as follows:--
+
+A good and amiable woman, who had married him from love, determined to
+separate from him.
+
+Two of the greatest lawyers of England confirmed her in this decision,
+and threatened Lord Byron, that, unless he consented to this, they would
+expose the evidence against him in a suit for divorce.  He fled from this
+exposure, and never afterwards sought public investigation.
+
+He was angry with and malicious towards the counsel who supported his
+wife; he was angry at and afraid of a wife who did nothing to injure him,
+and he made it a special object to defame and degrade her.  He gave such
+evidence of remorse and fear in his writings as to lead eminent literary
+men to believe he had committed a great crime.  The public rumour of his
+day specified what the crime was.  His relations, by his own showing,
+joined against him.  The report was silenced by his wife's efforts only.
+Lord Byron subsequently declares the existence of an illegitimate child,
+born before he left England.  Corresponding to this, there is the
+history, known in England, of a child believed to be his, in whom his
+wife took an interest.
+
+All these presumptions exist independently of any direct testimony from
+Lady Byron.  They are to be admitted as true, whether she says a word one
+way or the other.
+
+From this background of proof, I come forward, and testify to an
+interview with Lady Byron, in which she gave me specific information of
+the facts in the case.  That I report the facts just as I received them
+from her, not altered or misremembered, is shown by the testimony of my
+sister, to whom I related them at the time.  It cannot, then, be denied
+that I had this interview, and that this communication was made.  I
+therefore testify that Lady Byron, for a proper purpose, and at a proper
+time, stated to me the following things:--
+
+1.  That the crime which separated her from Lord Byron was incest.
+
+2.  That she first discovered it by improper actions towards his sister,
+which, he meant to make her understand, indicated the guilty relation.
+
+3.  That he admitted it, reasoned on it, defended it, tried to make her
+an accomplice, and, failing in that, hated her and expelled her.
+
+4.  That he threatened her that he would make it his life's object to
+destroy her character.
+
+5.  That for a period she was led to regard this conduct as insanity, and
+to consider him only as a diseased person.
+
+6.  That she had subsequent proof that the facts were really as she
+suspected; that there had been a child born of the crime, whose history
+she knew; that Mrs. Leigh had repented.
+
+The purpose for which this was stated to me was to ask, Was it her duty
+to make the truth fully known during her lifetime?
+
+Here, then, is a man believed guilty of an unusual crime by two lawyers,
+the best in England, who have seen the evidence,--a man who dares not
+meet legal investigation.  The crime is named in society, and deemed so
+far probable to the men of his generation as to be spoken of by Shelley
+as the only important allegation against him.  He acts through life
+exactly like a man struggling with remorse, and afraid of detection; he
+has all the restlessness and hatred and fear that a man has who feels
+that there is evidence which might destroy him.  He admits an
+illegitimate child besides Allegra.  A child believed to have been his is
+known to many in England.  Added to all this, his widow, now advanced in
+years, and standing on the borders of eternity, being, as appears by her
+writings and conversation, of perfectly sound mind at the time, testifies
+to me the facts before named, which exactly correspond to probabilities.
+
+I publish the statement; and the solicitors who hold Lady Byron's private
+papers do not deny the truth of the story.  They try to cast discredit on
+me for speaking; but they do not say that I have spoken falsely, or that
+the story is not true.  The lawyer who knew Lady Byron's story in 1816
+does not now deny that this is the true one.  Several persons in England
+testify that, at various times, and for various purposes, the same story
+has been told to them.  Moreover, it appears from my last letter
+addressed to Lady Byron on this subject, that I recommended her to leave
+all necessary papers in the hands of some discreet persons, who, after
+both had passed away, should see that justice was done.  The solicitors
+admit that Lady Byron has left sealed papers of great importance in the
+hands of trustees, with discretionary power.  I have been informed very
+directly that the nature of these documents was such as to lead to the
+suppression of Lady Byron's life and writings.  This is all exactly as it
+would be, if the story related by Lady Byron were the true one.
+
+The evidence under this point of view is so strong, that a great effort
+has been made to throw out Lady Byron's testimony.
+
+This attempt has been made on two grounds.  1st, That she was under a
+mental hallucination.  This theory has been most ably refuted by the very
+first authority in England upon the subject.  He says,--
+
+   'No person practically acquainted with the true characteristics of
+   insanity would affirm, that, had this idea of "incest" been an insane
+   hallucination, Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which
+   intervened between her unhappy marriage and death, have refrained from
+   exhibiting it, not only to legal advisers and trustees (assuming that
+   she revealed to them the fact), but to others, exacting no pledge of
+   secrecy from them as to her mental impressions.  Lunatics do for a
+   time, and for some special purpose, most cunningly conceal their
+   delusions; but they have not the capacity to struggle for thirty-six
+   years, as Lady Byron must have done, with so frightful an
+   hallucination, without the insane state of mind becoming obvious to
+   those with whom they are daily associating.  Neither is it consistent
+   with experience to suppose, that, if Lady Byron had been a monomaniac,
+   her state of disordered understanding would have been restricted to
+   one hallucination.  Her diseased brain, affecting the normal action of
+   thought, would, in all probability, have manifested other symptoms
+   besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.
+
+   'During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity
+   (assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that
+   of Lady Byron.  In my experience, it is unique.  I never saw a patient
+   with such a delusion.'
+
+We refer our readers to a careful study of Dr. Forbes Winslow's
+consideration of this subject given in Part III.  Anyone who has been
+familiar with the delicacy and acuteness of Dr. Winslow, as shown in his
+work on obscure diseases of the brain and nerves, must feel that his
+positive assertion on this ground is the best possible evidence.  We here
+gratefully acknowledge our obligations to Dr. Winslow for the corrected
+proof of his valuable letter, which he has done us the honour to send for
+this work.  We shall consider that his argument, in connection with what
+the reader may observe of Lady Byron's own writings, closes that issue of
+the case completely.
+
+The other alternative is, that Lady Byron deliberately committed false
+witness.  This was the ground assumed by the 'Blackwood,' when in July,
+1869, it took upon itself the responsibility of re-opening the Byron
+controversy.  It is also the ground assumed by 'The London Quarterly' of
+to-day.
+
+Both say, in so many words, that no crime was imputed to Lord Byron; that
+the representations made to Lushington in the beginning were false ones;
+and that the story told to Lady Byron's confidential friends in later
+days was also false.
+
+Let us examine this theory.  In the first place, it requires us to
+believe in the existence of a moral monster of whom Madame Brinvilliers
+is cited as the type.  The 'Blackwood,' let it be remembered, opens the
+controversy with the statement that Lady Byron was a Madame Brinvilliers.
+The 'Quarterly' does not shrink from the same assumption.
+
+Let us consider the probability of this question.
+
+If Lady Byron were such a woman, and wished to ruin her husband's
+reputation in order to save her own, and, being perfectly unscrupulous,
+had circulated against him a story of unnatural crime which had no
+proofs, how came two of the first lawyers of England to assume the
+responsibility of offering to present her case in open court?  How came
+her husband, if he knew himself guiltless, to shrink from that public
+investigation which must have demonstrated his innocence?  Most
+astonishing of all, when he fled from trial, and the report got abroad
+against him in England, and was believed even by his own relations, why
+did not his wife avail herself of the moment to complete her victory?  If
+at that moment she had publicly broken with Mrs. Leigh, she might have
+confirmed every rumour.  Did she do it? and why not?  According to the
+'Blackwood,' we have here a woman who has made up a frightful story to
+ruin her husband's reputation, yet who takes every pains afterwards to
+prevent its being ruined.  She fails to do the very thing she undertakes;
+and for years after, rather than injure him, she loses public sympathy,
+and, by sealing the lips of her legal counsel, deprives herself of the
+advantage of their testimony.
+
+Moreover, if a desire for revenge could have been excited in her, it
+would have been provoked by the first publication of the fourth canto of
+'Childe Harold,' when she felt that Byron was attacking her before the
+world.  Yet we have Lady Anne Barnard's testimony, that, at this time,
+she was so far from wishing to injure him, that all her communications
+were guarded by cautious secrecy.  At this time, also, she had a strong
+party in England, to whom she could have appealed.  Again: when 'Don
+Juan' was first printed, it excited a violent re-action against Lord
+Byron.  Had his wife chosen then to accuse him, and display the evidence
+she had shown to her counsel, there is little doubt that all the world
+would have stood with her; but she did not.  After his death, when she
+spoke at last, there seems little doubt from the strength of Dr.
+Lushington's language, that Lady Byron had a very strong case, and that,
+had she been willing, her counsel could have told much more than he did.
+She might then have told her whole story, and been believed.  Her word
+was believed by Christopher North, and accepted as proof that Byron had
+been a great criminal.  Had revenge been her motive, she could have
+spoken the ONE WORD more that North called for.
+
+The 'Quarterly' asks why she waited till everybody concerned was dead.
+There is an obvious answer.  Because, while there was anybody living to
+whom the testimony would have been utterly destructive, there were the
+best reasons for withholding it.  When all were gone from earth, and she
+herself was in constant expectation of passing away, there was a reason,
+and a proper one, why she should speak.  By nature and principle
+truthful, she had had the opportunity of silently watching the operation
+of a permitted lie upon a whole generation.  She had been placed in a
+position in which it was necessary, by silence, to allow the spread and
+propagation through society of a radical falsehood.  Lord Byron's life,
+fame, and genius had all struck their roots into this lie, been nourished
+by it, and had derived thence a poisonous power.
+
+In reading this history, it will be remarked that he pleaded his personal
+misfortunes in his marriage as excuses for every offence against
+morality, and that the literary world of England accepted the plea, and
+tolerated and justified the crimes.  Never before, in England, had
+adultery been spoken of in so respectful a manner, and an adulteress
+openly praised and feted, and obscene language and licentious images
+publicly tolerated; and all on the plea of a man's private misfortunes.
+
+There was, therefore, great force in the suggestion made to Lady Byron,
+that she owed a testimony in this case to truth and justice, irrespective
+of any personal considerations.  There is no more real reason for
+allowing the spread of a hurtful falsehood that affects ourselves than
+for allowing one that affects our neighbour.  This falsehood had
+corrupted the literature and morals of both England and America, and led
+to the public toleration, by respectable authorities, of forms of vice at
+first indignantly rejected.  The question was, Was this falsehood to go
+on corrupting literature as long as history lasted?  Had the world no
+right to true history?  Had she who possessed the truth no responsibility
+to the world?  Was not a final silence a confirmation of a lie with all
+its consequences?
+
+This testimony of Lady Byron, so far from being thrown out altogether, as
+the 'Quarterly' proposes, has a peculiar and specific value from the
+great forbearance and reticence which characterised the greater part of
+her life.
+
+The testimony of a person who has shown in every action perfect
+friendliness to another comes with the more weight on that account.
+Testimony extorted by conscience from a parent against a child, or a wife
+against a husband, where all the other actions of the life prove the
+existence of kind feeling, is held to be the strongest form of evidence.
+
+The fact that Lady Byron, under the severest temptations and the
+bitterest insults and injuries, withheld every word by which Lord Byron
+could be criminated, so long as he and his sister were living, is strong
+evidence, that, when she did speak, it was not under the influence of ill-
+will, but of pure conscientious convictions; and the fullest weight
+ought, therefore, to be given to her testimony.
+
+We are asked now why she ever spoke at all.  The fact that her story is
+known to several persons in England is brought up as if it were a crime.
+To this we answer, Lady Byron had an undoubted moral right to have
+exposed the whole story in a public court in 1816, and thus cut herself
+loose from her husband by a divorce.  For the sake of saving her husband
+and sister from destruction, she waived this right to self-justification,
+and stood for years a silent sufferer under calumny and
+misrepresentation.  She desired nothing but to retire from the whole
+subject; to be permitted to enjoy with her child the peace and seclusion
+that belong to her sex.  Her husband made her, through his life and after
+his death, a subject of such constant discussion, that she must either
+abandon the current literature of her day, or run the risk of reading
+more or less about herself in almost every magazine of her time.
+Conversations with Lord Byron, notes of interviews with Lord Byron,
+journals of time spent with Lord Byron, were constantly spread before the
+public.  Leigh Hunt, Galt, Medwin, Trelawney, Lady Blessington, Dr.
+Kennedy, and Thomas Moore, all poured forth their memorials; and in all
+she figured prominently.  All these had their tribes of reviewers and
+critics, who also discussed her.  The profound mystery of her silence
+seemed constantly to provoke inquiry.  People could not forgive her for
+not speaking.  Her privacy, retirement, and silence were set down as
+coldness, haughtiness, and contempt of human sympathy.  She was
+constantly challenged to say something: as, for example, in the 'Noctes'
+of November 1825, six months after Byron's death, Christopher North says,
+speaking of the burning of the Autobiography,--
+
+   'I think, since the Memoir was burned by these people, these people
+   are bound to put us in possession of the best evidence they still have
+   the power of producing, in order that we may come to a just conclusion
+   as to a subject upon which, by their act, at least, as much as by any
+   other people's act, we are compelled to consider it our duty to make
+   up our deliberate opinion,--deliberate and decisive.  Woe be to those
+   who provoke this curiosity, and will not allay it!  Woe be to them!
+   say I.  Woe to them! says the world.'
+
+When Lady Byron published her statement, which certainly seemed called
+for by this language, Christopher North blamed her for doing it, and then
+again said that she ought to go on and tell the whole story.  If she was
+thus adjured to speak, blamed for speaking, and adjured to speak further,
+all in one breath, by public prints, there is reason to think that there
+could not have come less solicitation from private sources,--from friends
+who had access to her at all hours, whom she loved, by whom she was
+beloved, and to whom her refusal to explain might seem a breach of
+friendship.  Yet there is no evidence on record, that we have seen, that
+she ever had other confidant than her legal counsel, till after all the
+actors in the events were in their graves, and the daughter, for whose
+sake largely the secret was guarded, had followed them.
+
+Now, does anyone claim, that, because a woman has sacrificed for twenty
+years all cravings for human sympathy, and all possibility of perfectly
+free and unconstrained intercourse with her friends, that she is obliged
+to go on bearing this same lonely burden to the end of her days?
+
+Let anyone imagine the frightful constraint and solitude implied in this
+sentence.  Let anyone, too, think of its painful complications in life.
+The roots of a falsehood are far-reaching.  Conduct that can only be
+explained by criminating another must often seem unreasonable and
+unaccountable; and the most truthful person, who feels bound to keep
+silence regarding a radical lie of another, must often be placed in
+positions most trying to conscientiousness.  The great merit of 'Caleb
+Williams' as a novel consists in its philosophical analysis of the utter
+helplessness of an innocent person who agrees to keep the secret of a
+guilty one.  One sees there how that necessity of silence produces all
+the effect of falsehood on his part, and deprives him of the confidence
+and sympathy of those with whom he would take refuge.
+
+For years, this unnatural life was forced on Lady Byron, involving her as
+in a network, even in her dearest family relations.
+
+That, when all the parties were dead, Lady Byron should allow herself the
+sympathy of a circle of intimate friends, is something so perfectly
+proper and natural, that we cannot but wonder that her conduct in this
+respect has ever been called in question.  If it was her right to have
+had a public expose in 1816, it was certainly her right to show to her
+own intimate circle the secret of her life when all the principal actors
+were passed from earth.
+
+The 'Quarterly' speaks as if, by thus waiting, she deprived Lord Byron of
+the testimony of living witnesses.  But there were as many witnesses and
+partisans dead on her side as on his.  Lady Milbanke and Sir Ralph, Sir
+Samuel Romilly and Lady Anne Barnard were as much dead as Hobhouse,
+Moore, and others of Byron's partisans.
+
+The 'Quarterly' speaks of Lady Byron as 'running round, and repeating her
+story to people mostly below her own rank in life.'
+
+To those who know the personal dignity of Lady Byron's manners,
+represented and dwelt on by her husband in his conversations with Lady
+Blessington, this coarse and vulgar attack only proves the poverty of a
+cause which can defend itself by no better weapons.
+
+Lord Byron speaks of his wife as 'highly cultivated;' as having 'a degree
+of self-control I never saw equalled.'
+
+   'I am certain,' he says, 'that Lady Byron's first idea is what is due
+   to herself: I mean that it is the undeviating rule of her conduct . .
+   . .  Now, my besetting sin is a want of that self-respect which she
+   has in excess . . . .  But, though I accuse Lady Byron of an excess of
+   self-respect, I must, in candour, admit, that, if any person ever had
+   excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has; as, in all her
+   thoughts, words, and actions, she is the most decorous woman that ever
+   existed.'
+
+This is the kind of woman who has lately been accused in the public
+prints as a babbler of secrets and a gossip in regard to her private
+difficulties with children, grandchildren, and servants.  It is a fair
+specimen of the justice that has generally been meted out to Lady Byron.
+
+In 1836, she was accused of having made a confidant of Campbell, on the
+strength of having written him a note declining to give him any
+information, or answer any questions.  In July, 1869, she was denounced
+by 'Blackwood' as a Madame Brinvilliers for keeping such perfect silence
+on the matter of her husband's character; and in the last 'Quarterly' she
+is spoken of as a gossip 'running round, and repeating her story to
+people below her in rank.'
+
+While we are upon this subject, we have a suggestion to make.  John
+Stuart Mill says that utter self-abnegation has been preached to women as
+a peculiarly feminine virtue.  It is true; but there is a moral limit to
+the value of self-abnegation.
+
+It is a fair question for the moralist, whether it is right and proper
+wholly to ignore one's personal claims to justice.  The teachings of the
+Saviour give us warrant for submitting to personal injuries; but both the
+Saviour and St. Paul manifested bravery in denying false accusations, and
+asserting innocence.
+
+Lady Byron was falsely accused of having ruined the man of his
+generation, and caused all his vices and crimes, and all their evil
+effects on society.  She submitted to the accusation for a certain number
+of years for reasons which commended themselves to her conscience; but
+when all the personal considerations were removed, and she was about
+passing from life, it was right, it was just, it was strictly in
+accordance with the philosophical and ethical character of her mind, and
+with her habit of considering all things in their widest relations to the
+good of mankind, that she should give serious attention and consideration
+to the last duty which she might owe to abstract truth and justice in her
+generation.
+
+In her letter on the religious state of England, we find her advocating
+an absolute frankness in all religious parties.  She would have all
+openly confess those doubts, which, from the best of motives, are usually
+suppressed; and believed, that, as a result of such perfect truthfulness,
+a wider love would prevail among Christians.  This shows the strength of
+her conviction of the power and the importance of absolute truth; and
+shows, therefore, that her doubts and conscientious inquiries respecting
+her duty on this subject are exactly what might have been expected from a
+person of her character and principles.
+
+Having thus shown that Lady Byron's testimony is the testimony of a woman
+of strong and sound mind, that it was not given from malice nor ill-will,
+that it was given at a proper time and in a proper manner, and for a
+purpose in accordance with the most elevated moral views, and that it is
+coincident with all the established facts of this history, and furnishes
+a perfect solution of every mystery of the case, we think we shall carry
+the reader with us in saying that it is to be received as absolute truth.
+
+This conviction we arrive at while as yet we are deprived of the
+statement prepared by Lady Byron, and the proof by which she expected to
+sustain it; both which, as we understand, are now in the hands of her
+trustees.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.  PHYSIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.
+
+
+The credibility of the accusation of the unnatural crime charged to Lord
+Byron is greater than if charged to most men.  He was born of parents
+both of whom were remarkable for perfectly ungoverned passions.  There
+appears to be historical evidence that he was speaking literal truth when
+he says to Medwin of his father,--
+
+   'He would have made a bad hero for Hannah More.  He ran out three
+   fortunes, and married or ran away with three women . . .  He seemed
+   born for his own ruin and that of the other sex.  He began by seducing
+   Lady Carmarthen, and spent her four thousand pounds; and, not content
+   with one adventure of this kind, afterwards eloped with Miss
+   Gordon.'--Medwin's Conversations, p.31.
+
+Lady Carmarthen here spoken of was the mother of Mrs. Leigh.  Miss Gordon
+became Lord Byron's mother.
+
+By his own account, and that of Moore, she was a passionate, ungoverned,
+though affectionate woman.  Lord Byron says to Medwin,--
+
+   'I lost my father when I was only six years of age.  My mother, when
+   she was in a passion with me (and I gave her cause enough), used to
+   say, "O you little dog! you are a Byron all over; you are as bad as
+   your father!"'--Ibid., p.37.
+
+By all the accounts of his childhood and early youth, it is made apparent
+that ancestral causes had sent him into the world with a most perilous
+and exceptional sensitiveness of brain and nervous system, which it would
+have required the most judicious course of education to direct safely and
+happily.
+
+Lord Byron often speaks as if he deemed himself subject to tendencies
+which might terminate in insanity.  The idea is so often mentioned and
+dwelt upon in his letters, journals, and conversations, that we cannot
+but ascribe it to some very peculiar experience, and not to mere
+affectation.
+
+But, in the history of his early childhood and youth, we see no evidence
+of any original malformation of nature.  We see only evidence of one of
+those organisations, full of hope and full of peril, which adverse
+influences might easily drive to insanity, but wise physiological
+training and judicious moral culture might have guided to the most
+splendid results.  But of these he had neither.  He was alternately the
+pet and victim of his mother's tumultuous nature, and equally injured
+both by her love and her anger.  A Scotch maid of religious character
+gave him early serious impressions of religion, and thus added the
+element of an awakened conscience to the conflicting ones of his
+character.
+
+Education, in the proper sense of the word, did not exist in England in
+those days.  Physiological considerations of the influence of the body on
+the soul, of the power of brain and nerve over moral development, had
+then not even entered the general thought of society.  The school and
+college education literally taught him nothing but the ancient classics,
+of whose power in exciting and developing the animal passions Byron often
+speaks.
+
+The morality of the times is strikingly exemplified even in its literary
+criticism.
+
+For example: One of Byron's poems, written while a schoolboy at Harrow,
+is addressed to 'My Son.'  Mr. Moore, and the annotator of the standard
+edition of Byron's poems, gravely give the public their speculations on
+the point, whether Lord Byron first became a father while a schoolboy at
+Harrow; and go into particulars in relation to a certain infant, the
+claim to which lay between Lord Byron and another schoolfellow.  It is
+not the nature of the event itself, so much as the cool, unembarrassed
+manner in which it is discussed, that gives the impression of the state
+of public morals.  There is no intimation of anything unusual, or
+discreditable to the school, in the event, and no apparent suspicion that
+it will be regarded as a serious imputation on Lord Byron's character.
+
+Modern physiological developments would lead any person versed in the
+study of the reciprocal influence of physical and moral laws to
+anticipate the most serious danger to such an organisation as Lord
+Byron's, from a precocious development of the passions.  Alcoholic and
+narcotic stimulants, in the case of such a person, would be regarded as
+little less than suicidal, and an early course of combined drinking and
+licentiousness as tending directly to establish those unsound conditions
+which lead towards moral insanity.  Yet not only Lord Byron's testimony,
+but every probability from the licence of society, goes to show that this
+was exactly what did take place.
+
+Neither restrained by education, nor warned by any correct physiological
+knowledge, nor held in check by any public sentiment, he drifted directly
+upon the fatal rock.
+
+Here we give Mr. Moore full credit for all his abatements in regard to
+Lord Byron's excesses in his early days.  Moore makes the point very
+strongly that he was not, de facto, even so bad as many of his
+associates; and we agree with him.  Byron's physical organisation was
+originally as fine and sensitive as that of the most delicate woman.  He
+possessed the faculty of moral ideality in a high degree; and he had not,
+in the earlier part of his life, an attraction towards mere brutal vice.
+His physical sensitiveness was so remarkable that he says of himself, 'A
+dose of salts has the effect of a temporary inebriation, like light
+champagne, upon me.'  Yet this exceptionally delicately-organised boy and
+youth was in a circle where not to conform to the coarse drinking-customs
+of his day was to incur censure and ridicule.  That he early acquired the
+power of bearing large quantities of liquor is manifested by the record
+in his Journal, that, on the day when he read the severe 'Edinburgh'
+article upon his schoolboy poems, he drank three bottles of claret at a
+sitting.
+
+Yet Byron was so far superior to his times, that some vague impulses to
+physiological prudence seem to have suggested themselves to him, and been
+acted upon with great vigour.  He never could have lived so long as he
+did, under the exhaustive process of every kind of excess, if he had not
+re-enforced his physical nature by an assiduous care of his muscular
+system.  He took boxing-lessons, and distinguished himself in all
+athletic exercises.
+
+He also had periods in which he seemed to try vaguely to retrieve himself
+from dissipation, and to acquire self-mastery by what he called
+temperance.
+
+But, ignorant and excessive in all his movements, his very efforts at
+temperance were intemperate.  From violent excesses in eating and
+drinking, he would pass to no less unnatural periods of utter abstinence.
+Thus the very conservative power which Nature has of adapting herself to
+any settled course was lost.  The extreme sensitiveness produced by long
+periods of utter abstinence made the succeeding debauch more maddening
+and fatal.  He was like a fine musical instrument, whose strings were
+every day alternating between extreme tension and perfect laxity.  We
+have in his Journal many passages, of which the following is a specimen:--
+
+   'I have dined regularly to-day, for the first time since Sunday last;
+   this being Sabbath too,--all the rest, tea and dry biscuits, six per
+   diem.  I wish to God I had not dined, now!  It kills me with
+   heaviness, stupor, and horrible dreams; and yet it was but a pint of
+   bucellas, and fish.  Meat I never touch, nor much vegetable diet.  I
+   wish I were in the country, to take exercise, instead of being obliged
+   to cool by abstinence, in lieu of it.  I should not so much mind a
+   little accession of flesh: my bones can well bear it.  But the worst
+   is, the Devil always came with it, till I starved him out; and I will
+   not be the slave of any appetite.  If I do err, it shall be my heart,
+   at least, that heralds the way.  O my head! how it aches!  The horrors
+   of digestion!  I wonder how Bonaparte's dinner agrees with
+   him.'--Moore's Life, vol. ii. p.264.
+
+From all the contemporary history and literature of the times, therefore,
+we have reason to believe that Lord Byron spoke the exact truth when he
+said to Medwin,--
+
+   'My own master at an age when I most required a guide, left to the
+   dominion of my passions when they were the strongest, with a fortune
+   anticipated before I came into possession of it, and a constitution
+   impaired by early excesses, I commenced my travels, in 1809, with a
+   joyless indifference to the world and all that was before
+   me.'--Medwin's Conversations, p.42.
+
+Utter prostration of the whole physical man from intemperate excess, the
+deadness to temptation which comes from utter exhaustion, was his
+condition, according to himself and Moore, when he first left England, at
+twenty-one years of age.
+
+In considering his subsequent history, we are to take into account that
+it was upon the brain and nerve-power, thus exhausted by early excess,
+that the draughts of sudden and rapid literary composition began to be
+made.  There was something unnatural and unhealthy in the rapidity,
+clearness, and vigour with which his various works followed each other.
+Subsequently to the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold,' 'The Bride of
+Abydos,' 'The Corsair,' 'The Giaour,' 'Lara,' 'Parisina,' and 'The Siege
+of Corinth,' all followed close upon each other, in a space of less than
+three years, and those the three most critical years of his life.  'The
+Bride of Abydos' came out in the autumn of 1813, and was written in a
+week; and 'The Corsair' was composed in thirteen days.  A few months more
+than a year before his marriage, and the brief space of his married life,
+was the period in which all this literary labour was performed, while yet
+he was running the wild career of intrigue and fashionable folly.  He
+speaks of 'Lara' as being tossed off in the intervals between masquerades
+and balls, etc.  It is with the physical results of such unnatural
+efforts that we have now chiefly to do.  Every physiologist would say
+that the demands of such poems on a healthy brain, in that given space,
+must have been exhausting; but when we consider that they were cheques
+drawn on a bank broken by early extravagance, and that the subject was
+prodigally spending vital forces in every other direction at the same
+time, one can scarcely estimate the physiological madness of such a
+course as Lord Byron's.
+
+It is evident from his Journal, and Moore's account, that any amount of
+physical force which was for the time restored by his first foreign
+travel was recklessly spent in this period, when he threw himself with a
+mad recklessness into London society in the time just preceding his
+marriage.  The revelations made in Moore's Memoir of this period are sad
+enough: those to Medwin are so appalling as to the state of contemporary
+society in England, as to require, at least, the benefit of the doubt for
+which Lord Byron's habitual carelessness of truth gave scope.  His
+adventures with ladies of the highest rank in England are there paraded
+with a freedom of detail that respect for womanhood must lead every woman
+to question.  The only thing that is unquestionable is, that Lord Byron
+made these assertions to Medwin, not as remorseful confessions, but as
+relations of his bonnes fortunes, and that Medwin published them in the
+very face of the society to which they related.
+
+When Lord Byron says, 'I have seen a great deal of Italian society, and
+swum in a gondola; but nothing could equal the profligacy of high life in
+England . . .  when I knew it,' he makes certainly strong assertions, if
+we remember what Mr. Moore reveals of the harem kept in Venice.
+
+But when Lord Byron intimates that three married women in his own rank in
+life, who had once held illicit relations with him, made wedding-visits
+to his wife at one time, we must hope that he drew on his active
+imagination, as he often did, in his statements in regard to women.
+
+When he relates at large his amour with Lord Melbourne's wife, and
+represents her as pursuing him with an insane passion, to which he with
+difficulty responded; and when he says that she tracked a rival lady to
+his lodgings, and came into them herself, disguised as a carman--one
+hopes that he exaggerates.  And what are we to make of passages like
+this?--
+
+   'There was a lady at that time, double my own age, the mother of
+   several children who were perfect angels, with whom I formed a liaison
+   that continued without interruption for eight months.  She told me she
+   was never in love till she was thirty, and I thought myself so with
+   her when she was forty.  I never felt a stronger passion, which she
+   returned with equal ardour . . . . . . .
+
+   'Strange as it may seem, she gained, as all women do, an influence
+   over me so strong that I had great difficulty in breaking with her.'
+
+Unfortunately, these statements, though probably exaggerated, are, for
+substance, borne out in the history of the times.  With every possible
+abatement for exaggeration in these statements, there remains still
+undoubted evidence from other sources that Lord Byron exercised a most
+peculiar and fatal power over the moral sense of the women with whom he
+was brought in relation; and that love for him, in many women, became a
+sort of insanity, depriving them of the just use of their faculties.  All
+this makes his fatal history both possible and probable.
+
+Even the article in 'Blackwood,' written in 1825 for the express purpose
+of vindicating his character, admits that his name had been coupled with
+those of three, four, or more women of rank, whom it speaks of as
+'licentious, unprincipled, characterless women.'
+
+That such a course, in connection with alternate extremes of excess and
+abstinence in eating and drinking, and the immense draughts on the brain-
+power of rapid and brilliant composition, should have ended in that
+abnormal state in which cravings for unnatural vice give indications of
+approaching brain-disease, seems only too probable.
+
+This symptom of exhausted vitality becomes often a frequent type in
+periods of very corrupt society.  The dregs of the old Greek and Roman
+civilisation were foul with it; and the apostle speaks of the turning of
+the use of the natural into that which is against nature, as the last
+step in abandonment.
+
+The very literature of such periods marks their want of physical and
+moral soundness.  Having lost all sense of what is simple and natural and
+pure, the mind delights to dwell on horrible ideas, which give a
+shuddering sense of guilt and crime.  All the writings of this fatal
+period of Lord Byron's life are more or less intense histories of
+unrepentant guilt and remorse or of unnatural crime.  A recent writer in
+'Temple Bar' brings to light the fact, that 'The Bride of Abydos,' the
+first of the brilliant and rapid series of poems which began in the
+period immediately preceding his marriage, was, in its first composition,
+an intense story of love between a brother and sister in a Turkish harem;
+that Lord Byron declared, in a letter to Galt, that it was drawn from
+real life; that, in compliance with the prejudices of the age, he altered
+the relationship to that of cousins before publication.
+
+This same writer goes on to show, by a series of extracts from Lord
+Byron's published letters and journals, that his mind about this time was
+in a fearfully unnatural state, and suffering singular and inexplicable
+agonies of remorse; that, though he was accustomed fearlessly to confide
+to his friends immoralities which would be looked upon as damning, there
+was now a secret to which he could not help alluding in his letters, but
+which he told Moore he could not tell now, but 'some day or other when we
+are veterans.'  He speaks of his heart as eating itself out; of a
+mysterious person, whom he says, 'God knows I love too well, and the
+Devil probably too.'  He wrote a song, and sent it to Moore, addressed to
+a partner in some awful guilt, whose very name he dares not mention,
+because
+
+      'There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame.'
+
+He speaks of struggles of remorse, of efforts at repentance, and returns
+to guilt, with a sort of horror very different from the well-pleased air
+with which he relates to Medwin his common intrigues and adulteries.  He
+speaks of himself generally as oppressed by a frightful, unnatural gloom
+and horror, and, when occasionally happy, 'not in a way that can or ought
+to last.'
+
+'The Giaour,' 'The Corsair,' 'Lara,' 'Parisina,' 'The Siege of Corinth,'
+and 'Manfred,' all written or conceived about this period of his life,
+give one picture of a desperate, despairing, unrepentant soul, whom
+suffering maddens, but cannot reclaim.
+
+In all these he paints only the one woman, of concentrated, unconsidering
+passion, ready to sacrifice heaven and defy hell for a guilty man,
+beloved in spite of religion or reason.  In this unnatural literature,
+the stimulus of crime is represented as intensifying love.  Medora,
+Gulnare, the Page in 'Lara,' Parisina, and the lost sister of Manfred,
+love the more intensely because the object of the love is a criminal, out-
+lawed by God and man.  The next step beyond this is--madness.
+
+The work of Dr. Forbes Winslow on 'Obscure Diseases of the Brain and
+Nerves' {258} contains a passage so very descriptive of the case of Lord
+Byron, that it might seem to have been written for it.  The sixth chapter
+of his work, on 'Anomalous and Masked Affections of the Mind,' contains,
+in our view, the only clue that can unravel the sad tragedy of Byron's
+life.  He says, p.87,--
+
+   'These forms of unrecognised mental disorder are not always
+   accompanied by any well-marked disturbance of the bodily health
+   requiring medical attention, or any obvious departure from a normal
+   state of thought and conduct such as to justify legal interference;
+   neither do these affections always incapacitate the party from
+   engaging in the ordinary business of life . . . .  The change may have
+   progressed insidiously and stealthily, having slowly and almost
+   imperceptibly induced important molecular modifications in the
+   delicate vesicular neurine of the brain, ultimately resulting in some
+   aberration of the ideas, alteration of the affections, or perversion
+   of the propensities or instincts. . . .
+
+   'Mental disorder of a dangerous character has been known for years to
+   be stealthily advancing, without exciting the slightest notion of its
+   presence, until some sad and terrible catastrophe, homicide, or
+   suicide, has painfully awakened attention to its existence.  Persons
+   suffering from latent insanity often affect singularity of dress,
+   gait, conversation, and phraseology.  The most trifling circumstances
+   stimulate their excitability.  They are martyrs to ungovernable
+   paroxysms of passion, are inflamed to a state of demoniacal fury by
+   the most insignificant of causes, and occasionally lose all sense of
+   delicacy of feeling, sentiment, refinement of manners and
+   conversation.  Such manifestations of undetected mental disorder may
+   be seen associated with intellectual and moral qualities of the
+   highest order.'
+
+In another place, Dr. Winslow again adverts to this latter symptom, which
+was strikingly marked in the case of Lord Byron:--
+
+   'All delicacy and decency of thought are occasionally banished from
+   the mind, so effectually does the principle of thought in these
+   attacks succumb to the animal instincts and passions . . . .
+
+   'Such cases will commonly be found associated with organic
+   predisposition to insanity or cerebral disease . . . .  Modifications
+   of the malady are seen allied with genius.  The biographies of Cowper,
+   Burns, Byron, Johnson, Pope, and Haydon establish that the most
+   exalted intellectual conditions do not escape unscathed.
+
+   'In early childhood, this form of mental disturbance may, in many
+   cases, be detected.  To its existence is often to be traced the
+   motiveless crimes of the young.'
+
+No one can compare this passage of Dr. Forbes Winslow with the incidents
+we have already cited as occurring in that fatal period before the
+separation of Lord and Lady Byron, and not feel that the hapless young
+wife was indeed struggling with those inflexible natural laws, which, at
+some stages of retribution, involve in their awful sweep the guilty with
+the innocent.  She longed to save; but he was gone past redemption.
+Alcoholic stimulants and licentious excesses, without doubt, had produced
+those unseen changes in the brain, of which Dr. Forbes Winslow speaks;
+and the results were terrible in proportion to the peculiar fineness and
+delicacy of the organism deranged.
+
+Alas! the history of Lady Byron is the history of too many women in every
+rank of life who are called, in agonies of perplexity and fear, to watch
+that gradual process by which physical excesses change the organism of
+the brain, till slow, creeping, moral insanity comes on.  The woman who
+is the helpless victim of cruelties which only unnatural states of the
+brain could invent, who is heart-sick to-day and dreads to-morrow,--looks
+in hopeless horror on the fatal process by which a lover and a protector
+changes under her eyes, from day to day, to a brute and a fiend.
+
+Lady Byron's married life--alas! it is lived over in many a cottage and
+tenement-house, with no understanding on either side of the cause of the
+woeful misery.
+
+Dr. Winslow truly says, 'The science of these brain-affections is yet in
+its infancy in England.'  At that time, it had not even begun to be.
+Madness was a fixed point; and the inquiries into it had no nicety.  Its
+treatment, if established, had no redeeming power.  Insanity simply
+locked a man up as a dangerous being; and the very suggestion of it,
+therefore, was resented as an injury.
+
+A most peculiar and affecting feature of that form of brain disease which
+hurries its victim, as by an overpowering mania, into crime, is, that
+often the moral faculties and the affections remain to a degree
+unimpaired, and protest with all their strength against the outrage.
+Hence come conflicts and agonies of remorse proportioned to the strength
+of the moral nature.  Byron, more than any other one writer, may be
+called the poet of remorse.  His passionate pictures of this feeling seem
+to give new power to the English language:--
+
+   'There is a war, a chaos of the mind,
+   When all its elements convulsed--combined,
+   Lie dark and jarring with perturbed force,
+   And gnashing with impenitent remorse,
+   That juggling fiend, who never spake before,
+   But cries, "I warned thee!" when the deed is o'er.'
+
+It was this remorse that formed the only redeeming feature of the case.
+Its eloquence, its agonies, won from all hearts the interest that we give
+to a powerful nature in a state of danger and ruin; and it may be hoped
+that this feeling, which tempers the stern justice of human judgments,
+may prove only a faint image of the wider charity of Him whose thoughts
+are as far above ours as the heaven is above the earth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.  HOW COULD SHE LOVE HIM?
+
+
+It has seemed, to some, wholly inconsistent, that Lady Byron, if this
+story were true, could retain any kindly feeling for Lord Byron, or any
+tenderness for his memory; that the profession implied a certain
+hypocrisy: but, in this sad review, we may see how the woman who once had
+loved him, might, in spite of every wrong he had heaped upon her, still
+have looked on this awful wreck and ruin chiefly with pity.  While she
+stood afar, and refused to justify or join in the polluted idolatry which
+defended his vices, there is evidence in her writings that her mind often
+went back mournfully, as a mother's would, to the early days when he
+might have been saved.
+
+One of her letters in Robinson's Memoirs, in regard to his religious
+opinions, shows with what intense earnestness she dwelt upon the unhappy
+influences of his childhood and youth, and those early theologies which
+led him to regard himself as one of the reprobate.  She says,--
+
+   'Not merely from casual expressions, but from the whole tenor of Lord
+   Byron's feelings, I could not but conclude that he was a believer in
+   the inspiration of the Bible, and had the gloomiest Calvinistic
+   tenets.  To that unhappy view of the relation of the creature to the
+   Creator I have always ascribed the misery of his life.
+
+   'It is enough for me to know that he who thinks his transgression
+   beyond forgiveness . . . has righteousness beyond that of the self-
+   satisfied sinner.  It is impossible for me to doubt, that, could he
+   once have been assured of pardon, his living faith in moral duty, and
+   love of virtue ("I love the virtues that I cannot claim"), would have
+   conquered every temptation.  Judge, then, how I must hate the creed
+   that made him see God as an Avenger, and not as a Father!  My own
+   impressions were just the reverse, but could have but little weight;
+   and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts from that fixed idea
+   with which he connected his personal peculiarity as a stamp.  Instead
+   of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt convinced that
+   every blessing would be turned into a curse to him . . . "The worst of
+   it is, I do believe," he said.  I, like all connected with him, was
+   broken against the rock of predestination.  I may be pardoned for my
+   frequent reference to the sentiment (expressed by him), that I was
+   only sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy.'
+
+In this letter we have the heart, not of the wife, but of the mother,--the
+love that searches everywhere for extenuations of the guilt it is forced
+to confess.
+
+That Lady Byron was not alone in ascribing such results to the doctrines
+of Calvinism, in certain cases, appears from the language of the Thirty-
+nine Articles, which says:--
+
+   'As the godly consideration of predestination, and our election in
+   Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly
+   persons, and such as feel in themselves the workings of the spirit of
+   Christ; . . .  so, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the spirit
+   of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's
+   predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth
+   thrust them either into desperation, or into recklessness of most
+   unclean living,--no less perilous than desperation.'
+
+Lord Byron's life is an exact commentary on these words, which passed
+under the revision of Calvin himself.
+
+The whole tone of this letter shows not only that Lady Byron never lost
+her deep interest in her husband, but that it was by this experience that
+all her religious ideas were modified.  There is another of these letters
+in which she thus speaks of her husband's writings and character:--
+
+   'The author of the article on "Goethe" appears to me to have the mind
+   which could dispel the illusion about another poet, without
+   depreciating his claims . . . to the truest inspiration.
+
+   'Who has sought to distinguish between the holy and the unholy in that
+   spirit? to prove, by the very degradation of the one, how high the
+   other was.  A character is never done justice to by extenuating its
+   faults: so I do not agree to nisi bonum.  It is kinder to read the
+   blotted page.'
+
+These letters show that Lady Byron's idea was that, even were the whole
+mournful truth about Lord Byron fully told, there was still a foundation
+left for pity and mercy.  She seems to have remembered, that if his sins
+were peculiar, so also were his temptations; and to have schooled herself
+for years to gather up, and set in order in her memory, all that yet
+remained precious in this great ruin.  Probably no English writer that
+ever has made the attempt could have done this more perfectly.  Though
+Lady Byron was not a poet par excellence, yet she belonged to an order of
+souls fully equal to Lord Byron.  Hers was more the analytical mind of
+the philosopher than the creative mind of the poet; and it was, for that
+reason, the one mind in our day capable of estimating him fully both with
+justice and mercy.  No person in England had a more intense sensibility
+to genius, in its loftier acceptation, than Lady Byron; and none more
+completely sympathised with what was pure and exalted in her husband's
+writings.
+
+There is this peculiarity in Lord Byron, that the pure and the impure in
+his poetry often run side by side without mixing,--as one may see at
+Geneva the muddy stream of the Arve and the blue waters of the Rhone
+flowing together unmingled.  What, for example, can be nobler, and in a
+higher and tenderer moral strain than his lines on the dying gladiator,
+in 'Childe Harold'?  What is more like the vigour of the old Hebrew
+Scriptures than his thunderstorm in the Alps?  What can more perfectly
+express moral ideality of the highest kind than the exquisite
+descriptions of Aurora Raby,--pure and high in thought and language,
+occurring, as they do, in a work full of the most utter vileness?
+
+Lady Byron's hopes for her husband fastened themselves on all the noble
+fragments yet remaining in that shattered temple of his mind which lay
+blackened and thunder-riven; and she looked forward to a sphere beyond
+this earth, where infinite mercy should bring all again to symmetry and
+order.  If the strict theologian must regret this as an undue latitude of
+charity, let it at least be remembered that it was a charity which sprang
+from a Christian virtue, and which she extended to every human being,
+however lost, however low.  In her view, the mercy which took him was
+mercy that could restore all.
+
+In my recollections of the interview with Lady Byron, when this whole
+history was presented, I can remember that it was with a softened and
+saddened feeling that I contemplated the story, as one looks on some
+awful, inexplicable ruin.
+
+The last letter which I addressed to Lady Byron upon this subject will
+show that such was the impression of the whole interview.  It was in
+reply to the one written on the death of my son:--
+
+                                     'Jan. 30, 1858.
+
+   'MY DEAR FRIEND,--I did long to hear from you at a time when few knew
+   how to speak, because I knew that you had known everything that sorrow
+   can teach,--you, whose whole life has been a crucifixion, a long
+   ordeal.
+
+   'But I believe that the Lamb, who stands for ever "in the midst of the
+   throne, as it had been slain," has everywhere His followers,--those
+   who seem sent into the world, as He was, to suffer for the redemption
+   of others; and, like Him, they must look to the joy set before
+   them,--of redeeming others.
+
+   'I often think that God called you to this beautiful and terrible
+   ministry when He suffered you to link your destiny with one so
+   strangely gifted and so fearfully tempted.  Perhaps the reward that is
+   to meet you when you enter within the veil where you must so soon pass
+   will be to see that spirit, once chained and defiled, set free and
+   purified; and to know that to you it has been given, by your life of
+   love and faith, to accomplish this glorious change.
+
+   'I think increasingly on the subject on which you conversed with me
+   once,--the future state of retribution.  It is evident to me that the
+   spirit of Christianity has produced in the human spirit a tenderness
+   of love which wholly revolts from the old doctrine on this subject;
+   and I observe, that, the more Christ-like anyone becomes, the more
+   difficult it seems for them to accept it as hitherto presented.  And
+   yet, on the contrary, it was Christ who said, "Fear Him that is able
+   to destroy both soul and body in hell;" and the most appalling
+   language is that of Christ himself.
+
+   'Certain ideas, once prevalent, certainly must be thrown off.  An
+   endless infliction for past sins was once the doctrine: that we now
+   generally reject.  The doctrine now generally taught is, that an
+   eternal persistence in evil necessitates everlasting suffering, since
+   evil induces misery by the eternal nature of things; and this, I fear,
+   is inferable from the analogies of Nature, and confirmed by the whole
+   implication of the Bible.
+
+   'What attention have you given to this subject? and is there any fair
+   way of disposing of the current of assertion, and the still deeper
+   under-current of implication, on this subject, without admitting one
+   which loosens all faith in revelation, and throws us on pure
+   naturalism?  But of one thing I always feel sure: probation does not
+   end with this present life; and the number of the saved may therefore
+   be infinitely greater than the world's history leads us to suppose.
+
+   'I think the Bible implies a great crisis, a struggle, an agony, in
+   which God and Christ and all the good are engaged in redeeming from
+   sin; and we are not to suppose that the little portion that is done
+   for souls as they pass between the two doors of birth and death is
+   all.
+
+   'The Bible is certainly silent there.  The primitive Church believed
+   in the mercies of an intermediate state; and it was only the abuse of
+   it by Romanism that drove the Church into its present position, which,
+   I think, is wholly indefensible, and wholly irreconcilable with the
+   spirit of Christ.  For if it were the case, that probation in all
+   cases begins and ends here, God's example would surely be one that
+   could not be followed, and He would seem to be far less persevering
+   than even human beings in efforts to save.
+
+   'Nothing is plainer than that it would be wrong to give up any mind to
+   eternal sin till every possible thing had been done for its recovery;
+   and that is so clearly not the case here, that I can see that, with
+   thoughtful minds, this belief would cut the very roots of religious
+   faith in God: for there is a difference between facts that we do not
+   understand, and facts which we do understand, and perceive to be
+   wholly irreconcilable with a certain character professed by God.
+
+   'If God says He is love, and certain ways of explaining Scripture make
+   Him less loving and patient than man, then we make Scripture
+   contradict itself.  Now, as no passage of Scripture limits probation
+   to this life, and as one passage in Peter certainly unequivocally
+   asserts that Christ preached to the spirits in prison while His body
+   lay in the grave, I am clear upon this point.
+
+   'But it is also clear, that if there be those who persist in refusing
+   God's love, who choose to dash themselves for ever against the
+   inflexible laws of the universe, such souls must for ever suffer.
+
+   'There may be souls who hate purity because it reveals their vileness;
+   who refuse God's love, and prefer eternal conflict with it.  For such
+   there can be no peace.  Even in this life, we see those whom the
+   purest self-devoting love only inflames to madness; and we have only
+   to suppose an eternal persistence in this to suppose eternal misery.
+
+   'But on this subject we can only leave all reverently in the hands of
+   that Being whose almighty power is "declared chiefly in showing
+   mercy."'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.  CONCLUSION.
+
+
+In leaving this subject, I have an appeal to make to the men, and more
+especially to the women, who have been my readers.
+
+In justice to Lady Byron, it must be remembered that this publication of
+her story is not her act, but mine.  I trust you have already conceded,
+that, in so severe and peculiar a trial, she had a right to be understood
+fully by her immediate circle of friends, and to seek of them counsel in
+view of the moral questions to which such very exceptional circumstances
+must have given rise.  Her communication to me was not an address to the
+public: it was a statement of the case for advice.  True, by leaving the
+whole, unguarded by pledge or promise, it left discretionary power with
+me to use it if needful.
+
+You, my sisters, are to judge whether the accusation laid against Lady
+Byron by the 'Blackwood,' in 1869, was not of so barbarous a nature as to
+justify my producing the truth I held in my hands in reply.
+
+The 'Blackwood' claimed a right to re-open the subject because it was not
+a private but a public matter.  It claimed that Lord Byron's unfortunate
+marriage might have changed not only his own destiny, but that of all
+England.  It suggested, that, but for this, instead of wearing out his
+life in vice, and corrupting society by impure poetry, he might, at this
+day, have been leading the counsels of the State, and helping the onward
+movements of the world.  Then it directly charged Lady Byron with meanly
+forsaking her husband in a time of worldly misfortune; with fabricating a
+destructive accusation of crime against him, and confirming this
+accusation by years of persistent silence more guilty than open
+assertion.
+
+It has been alleged, that, even admitting that Lady Byron's story were
+true, it never ought to have been told.  Is it true, then, that a woman
+has not the same right to individual justice that a man has?  If the
+cases were reversed, would it have been thought just that Lord Byron
+should go down in history loaded with accusations of crime because he
+could be only vindicated by exposing the crime of his wife?
+
+It has been said that the crime charged on Lady Byron was comparatively
+unimportant, and the one against Lord Byron was deadly.
+
+But the 'Blackwood,' in opening the controversy, called Lady Byron by the
+name of an unnatural female criminal, whose singular atrocities alone
+entitle her to infamous notoriety; and the crime charged upon her was
+sufficient to warrant the comparison.
+
+Both crimes are foul, unnatural, horrible; and there is no middle ground
+between the admission of the one or the other.
+
+You must either conclude that a woman, all whose other works, words, and
+deeds were generous, just, and gentle, committed this one monstrous
+exceptional crime, without a motive, and against all the analogies of her
+character, and all the analogies of her treatment of others; or you must
+suppose that a man known by all testimony to have been boundlessly
+licentious, who took the very course which, by every physiological law,
+would have led to unnatural results, did, at last, commit an unnatural
+crime.
+
+The question, whether I did right, when Lady Byron was thus held up as an
+abandoned criminal by the 'Blackwood,' to interpose my knowledge of the
+real truth in her defence, is a serious one; but it is one for which I
+must account to God alone, and in which, without any contempt of the
+opinions of my fellow-creatures, I must say, that it is a small thing to
+be judged of man's judgment.
+
+I had in the case a responsibility very different from that of many
+others.  I had been consulted in relation to the publication of this
+story by Lady Byron, at a time when she had it in her power to have
+exhibited it with all its proofs, and commanded an instant conviction.  I
+have reason to think that my advice had some weight in suppressing that
+disclosure.  I gave that advice under the impression that the Byron
+controversy was a thing for ever passed, and never likely to return.
+
+It had never occurred to me, that, nine years after Lady Byron's death, a
+standard English periodical would declare itself free to re-open this
+controversy, when all the generation who were her witnesses had passed
+from earth; and that it would re-open it in the most savage form of
+accusation, and with the indorsement and commendation of a book of the
+vilest slanders, edited by Lord Byron's mistress.
+
+Let the reader mark the retributions of justice.  The accusations of the
+'Blackwood,' in 1869, were simply an intensified form of those first
+concocted by Lord Byron in his 'Clytemnestra' poem of 1816.  He forged
+that weapon, and bequeathed it to his party.  The 'Blackwood' took it up,
+gave it a sharper edge, and drove it to the heart of Lady Byron's fame.
+The result has been the disclosure of this history.  It is, then, Lord
+Byron himself, who, by his network of wiles, his ceaseless persecutions
+of his wife, his efforts to extend his partisanship beyond the grave, has
+brought on this tumultuous exposure.  He, and he alone, is the cause of
+this revelation.
+
+And now I have one word to say to those in England who, with all the
+facts and documents in their hands which could at once have cleared Lady
+Byron's fame, allowed the barbarous assault of the 'Blackwood' to go over
+the civilised world without a reply.  I speak to those who, knowing that
+I am speaking the truth, stand silent; to those who have now the ability
+to produce the facts and documents by which this cause might be instantly
+settled, and who do not produce them.
+
+I do not judge them; but I remind them that a day is coming when they and
+I must stand side by side at the great judgment-seat,--I to give an
+account for my speaking, they for their silence.
+
+In that day, all earthly considerations will have vanished like morning
+mists, and truth or falsehood, justice or injustice, will be the only
+realities.
+
+In that day, God, who will judge the secrets of all men, will judge
+between this man and this woman.  Then, if never before, the full truth
+shall be told both of the depraved and dissolute man who made it his
+life's object to defame the innocent, and the silent, the self-denying
+woman who made it her life's object to give space for repentance to the
+guilty.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III.  MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS.
+
+
+THE TRUE STORY OF LADY BYRON'S LIFE,
+AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 'THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.'
+
+
+The reading world of America has lately been presented with a book which
+is said to sell rapidly, and which appears to meet with universal favour.
+
+The subject of the book may be thus briefly stated: The mistress of Lord
+Byron comes before the world for the sake of vindicating his fame from
+slanders and aspersions cast on him by his wife.  The story of the
+mistress versus wife may be summed up as follows:--
+
+Lord Byron, the hero of the story, is represented as a human being
+endowed with every natural charm, gift, and grace, who, by the one false
+step of an unsuitable marriage, wrecked his whole life.  A narrow-minded,
+cold-hearted precisian, without sufficient intellect to comprehend his
+genius, or heart to feel for his temptations, formed with him one of
+those mere worldly marriages common in high life; and, finding that she
+could not reduce him to the mathematical proprieties and conventional
+rules of her own mode of life, suddenly, and without warning, abandoned
+him in the most cruel and inexplicable manner.
+
+It is alleged that she parted from him in apparent affection and good-
+humour, wrote him a playful, confiding letter upon the way, but, after
+reaching her father's house, suddenly, and without explanation, announced
+to him that she would never see him again; that this sudden abandonment
+drew down upon him a perfect storm of scandalous stories, which his wife
+never contradicted; that she never in any way or shape stated what the
+exact reasons for her departure had been, and thus silently gave scope to
+all the malice of thousands of enemies.  The sensitive victim was
+actually driven from England, his home broken up, and he doomed to be a
+lonely wanderer on foreign shores.
+
+In Italy, under bluer skies, and among a gentler people, with more
+tolerant modes of judgment, the authoress intimates that he found peace
+and consolation.  A lovely young Italian countess falls in love with him,
+and, breaking her family ties for his sake, devotes herself to him; and,
+in blissful retirement with her, he finds at last that domestic life for
+which he was so fitted.
+
+Soothed, calmed, and refreshed, he writes 'Don Juan,' which the world is
+at this late hour informed was a poem with a high moral purpose, designed
+to be a practical illustration of the doctrine of total depravity among
+young gentlemen in high life.
+
+Under the elevating influence of love, he rises at last to higher realms
+of moral excellence, and resolves to devote the rest of his life to some
+noble and heroic purpose; becomes the saviour of Greece; and dies
+untimely, leaving a nation to mourn his loss.
+
+The authoress dwells with a peculiar bitterness on Lady Byron's entire
+silence during all these years, as the most aggravated form of
+persecution and injury.  She informs the world that Lord Byron wrote his
+Autobiography with the purpose of giving a fair statement of the exact
+truth in the whole matter; and that Lady Byron bought up the manuscript
+of the publisher, and insisted on its being destroyed, unread; thus
+inflexibly depriving her husband of his last chance of a hearing before
+the tribunal of the public.
+
+As a result of this silent persistent cruelty on the part of a cold,
+correct, narrow-minded woman, the character of Lord Byron has been
+misunderstood, and his name transmitted to after-ages clouded with
+aspersions and accusations which it is the object of this book to remove.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Such is the story of Lord Byron's mistress,--a story which is going the
+length of this American continent, and rousing up new sympathy with the
+poet, and doing its best to bring the youth of America once more under
+the power of that brilliant, seductive genius, from which it was hoped
+they had escaped.  Already we are seeing it revamped in
+magazine-articles, which take up the slanders of the paramour and enlarge
+on them, and wax eloquent in denunciation of the marble-hearted
+insensible wife.
+
+All this while, it does not appear to occur to the thousands of
+unreflecting readers that they are listening merely to the story of Lord
+Byron's mistress, and of Lord Byron; and that, even by their own showing,
+their heaviest accusation against Lady Byron is that she has not spoken
+at all.  Her story has never been told.
+
+For many years after the rupture between Lord Byron and his wife, that
+poet's personality, fate, and happiness had an interest for the whole
+civilized world, which, we will venture to say, was unparalleled.  It is
+within the writer's recollection, how, in the obscure mountain-town where
+she spent her early days, Lord Byron's separation from his wife was, for
+a season, the all-engrossing topic.
+
+She remembers hearing her father recount at the breakfast-table the facts
+as they were given in the public papers, together with his own
+suppositions and theories of the causes.
+
+Lord Byron's 'Fare thee well,' addressed to Lady Byron, was set to music,
+and sung with tears by young school-girls, even in this distant America.
+
+Madame de Stael said of this appeal, that she was sure it would have
+drawn her at once to his heart and his arms; she could have forgiven
+everything: and so said all the young ladies all over the world, not only
+in England but in France and Germany, wherever Byron's poetry appeared in
+translation.
+
+Lady Byron's obdurate cold-heartedness in refusing even to listen to his
+prayers, or to have any intercourse with him which might lead to
+reconciliation, was the one point conceded on all sides.
+
+The stricter moralists defended her; but gentler hearts throughout all
+the world regarded her as a marble-hearted monster of correctness and
+morality, a personification of the law unmitigated by the gospel.
+
+Literature in its highest walks busied itself with Lady Byron.  Hogg, in
+the character of the Ettrick Shepherd, devotes several eloquent passages
+to expatiating on the conjugal fidelity of a poor Highland shepherd's
+wife, who, by patience and prayer and forgiveness, succeeds in reclaiming
+her drunken husband, and making a good man of him; and then points his
+moral by contrasting with this touching picture the cold-hearted
+pharisaical correctness of Lady Byron.
+
+Moore, in his 'Life of Lord Byron,' when beginning the recital of the
+series of disgraceful amours which formed the staple of his life in
+Venice, has this passage:--
+
+'Highly censurable in point of morality and decorum as was his course of
+life while under the roof of Madame ----, it was (with pain I am forced
+to confess) venial in comparison with the strange, headlong career of
+licence to which, when weaned from that connection, he so unrestrainedly,
+and, it may be added, defyingly abandoned himself.  Of the state of his
+mind on leaving England, I have already endeavoured to convey some idea;
+and among the feelings that went to make up that self-centred spirit of
+resistance which he then opposed to his fate was an indignant scorn for
+his own countrymen for the wrongs he thought they had done him.  For a
+time, the kindly sentiments which he still harboured toward Lady Byron,
+and a sort of vague hope, perhaps, that all would yet come right again,
+kept his mind in a mood somewhat more softened and docile, as well as
+sufficiently under the influence of English opinions to prevent his
+breaking out into open rebellion against it, as he unluckily did
+afterward.
+
+'By the failure of the attempted mediation with Lady Byron, his last link
+with home was severed: while, notwithstanding the quiet and unobtrusive
+life which he led at Geneva, there was as yet, he found, no cessation of
+the slanderous warfare against his character; the same busy and
+misrepresenting spirit which had tracked his every step at home, having,
+with no less malicious watchfulness, dogged him into exile.'
+
+We should like to know what the misrepresentations and slanders must have
+been, when this sort of thing is admitted in Mr. Moore's justification.
+It seems to us rather wonderful how anybody, unless it were a person like
+the Countess Guiccioli, could misrepresent a life such as even Byron's
+friend admits he was leading.
+
+During all these years, when he was setting at defiance every principle
+of morality and decorum, the interest of the female mind all over Europe
+in the conversion of this brilliant prodigal son was unceasing, and
+reflects the greatest credit upon the faith of the sex.
+
+Madame de Stael commenced the first effort at evangelization immediately
+after he left England, and found her catechumen in a most edifying state
+of humility.  He was, metaphorically, on his knees in penitence, and
+confessed himself a miserable sinner in the loveliest manner possible.
+Such sweetness and humility took all hearts.  His conversations with
+Madame de Stael were printed, and circulated all over the world; making
+it to appear that only the inflexibility of Lady Byron stood in the way
+of his entire conversion.
+
+Lady Blessington, among many others, took him in hand five or six years
+afterwards, and was greatly delighted with his docility, and edified by
+his frank and free confessions of his miserable offences.  Nothing now
+seemed wanting to bring the wanderer home to the fold but a kind word
+from Lady Byron.  But, when the fair countess offered to mediate, the
+poet only shook his head in tragic despair; 'he had so many times tried
+in vain; Lady Byron's course had been from the first that of obdurate
+silence.'
+
+Any one who would wish to see a specimen of the skill of the honourable
+poet in mystification will do well to read a letter to Lady Byron, which
+Lord Byron, on parting from Lady Blessington, enclosed for her to read
+just before he went to Greece.  He says,--
+
+'The letter which I enclose I was prevented from sending by my despair of
+its doing any good.  I was perfectly sincere when I wrote it, and am so
+still.  But it is difficult for me to withstand the thousand provocations
+on that subject which both friends and foes have for seven years been
+throwing in the way of a man whose feelings were once quick, and whose
+temper was never patient.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+'TO LADY BYRON, CARE OF THE HON. MRS. LEIGH, LONDON.
+
+                                 'PISA, Nov. 17, 1821.
+
+'I have to acknowledge the receipt of "Ada's hair," which is very soft
+and pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine was at twelve years old,
+if I may judge from what I recollect of some in Augusta's possession,
+taken at that age.  But it don't curl--perhaps from its being let grow.
+
+'I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name; and I will
+tell you why: I believe that they are the only two or three words of your
+handwriting in my possession.  For your letters I returned; and except
+the two words, or rather the one word, "Household," written twice in an
+old account book, I have no other.  I burnt your last note, for two
+reasons: firstly, it was written in a style not very agreeable; and,
+secondly, I wished to take your word without documents, which are the
+worldly resources of suspicious people.
+
+'I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about Ada's
+birthday--the 10th of December, I believe.  She will then be six: so
+that, in about twelve more, I shall have some chance of meeting her;
+perhaps sooner, if I am obliged to go to England by business or
+otherwise.  Recollect, however, one thing, either in distance or
+nearness--every day which keeps us asunder should, after so long a
+period, rather soften our mutual feelings; which must always have one
+rallying point as long as our child exists, which, I presume, we both
+hope will be long after either of her parents.
+
+'The time which has elapsed since the separation has been considerably
+more than the whole brief period of our union, and the not much longer
+one of our prior acquaintance.  We both made a bitter mistake; but now it
+is over, and irrevocably so.  For at thirty-three on my part, and few
+years less on yours, though it is no very extended period of life, still
+it is one when the habits and thought are generally so formed as to admit
+of no modification; and, as we could not agree when younger, we should
+with difficulty do so now.
+
+'I say all this, because I own to you, that notwithstanding everything, I
+considered our reunion as not impossible for more than a year after the
+separation; but then I gave up the hope entirely and for ever.  But this
+very impossibility of reunion seems to me at least a reason why, on all
+the few points of discussion which can arise between us, we should
+preserve the courtesies of life, and as much of its kindness as people
+who are never to meet may preserve,--perhaps more easily than nearer
+connections.  For my own part, I am violent, but not malignant; for only
+fresh provocations can awaken my resentments.  To you, who are colder and
+more concentrated, I would just hint, that you may sometimes mistake the
+depth of a cold anger for dignity, and a worse feeling for duty.  I
+assure you that I bear you now (whatever I may have done) no resentment
+whatever.  Remember, that, if you have injured me in aught, this
+forgiveness is something; and that, if I have injured you, it is
+something more still, if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most
+offending are the least forgiving.
+
+'Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on
+yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things; viz.,
+that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet again.
+I think, if you also consider the two corresponding points with reference
+to myself, it will be better for all three.
+
+                                  'Yours ever,
+
+                                       'NOEL BYRON.'
+
+The artless Thomas Moore introduces this letter in the 'Life,' with the
+remark,--
+
+'There are few, I should think, of my readers, who will not agree with me
+in pronouncing, that, if the author of the following letter had not right
+on his side, he had at least most of those good feelings which are found
+in general to accompany it.'
+
+The reader is requested to take notice of the important admission; that
+the letter was never sent to Lady Byron at all.  It was, in fact, never
+intended for her, but was a nice little dramatic performance, composed
+simply with the view of acting on the sympathies of Lady Blessington and
+Byron's numerous female admirers; and the reader will agree with us, we
+think, that, in this point of view, it was very neatly done, and deserves
+immortality as a work of high art.  For six years he had been plunged
+into every kind of vice and excess, pleading his shattered domestic joys,
+and his wife's obdurate heart, as the apology and the impelling cause;
+filling the air with his shrieks and complaints concerning the slander
+which pursued him, while he filled letters to his confidential
+correspondents with records of new mistresses.  During all these years,
+the silence of Lady Byron was unbroken; though Lord Byron not only drew
+in private on the sympathies of his female admirers, but employed his
+talents and position as an author in holding her up to contempt and
+ridicule before thousands of readers.  We shall quote at length his side
+of the story, which he published in the First Canto of 'Don Juan,' that
+the reader may see how much reason he had for assuming the injured tone
+which he did in the letter to Lady Byron quoted above.  That letter never
+was sent to her; and the unmanly and indecent caricature of her, and the
+indelicate exposure of the whole story on his own side, which we are
+about to quote, were the only communications that could have reached her
+solitude.
+
+In the following verses, Lady Byron is represented as Donna Inez, and
+Lord Byron as Don Jose; but the incidents and allusions were so very
+pointed, that nobody for a moment doubted whose history the poet was
+narrating.
+
+   'His mother was a learned lady, famed
+      For every branch of every science known
+   In every Christian language ever named,
+      With virtues equalled by her wit alone:
+   She made the cleverest people quite ashamed;
+      And even the good with inward envy groaned,
+   Finding themselves so very much exceeded
+   In their own way by all the things that she did.
+   .          .          .          .
+   Save that her duty both to man and God
+   Required this conduct; which seemed very odd.
+
+   She kept a journal where his faults were noted,
+      And opened certain trunks of books and letters,
+   (All which might, if occasion served, be quoted);
+      And then she had all Seville for abettors,
+   Besides her good old grandmother (who doted):
+      The hearers of her case become repeaters,
+   Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges,--
+   Some for amusement, others for old grudges.
+
+   And then this best and meekest woman bore
+      With such serenity her husband's woes!
+   Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,
+      Who saw their spouses killed, and nobly chose
+   Never to say a word about them more.
+      Calmly she heard each calumny that rose,
+   And saw his agonies with such sublimity,
+   That all the world exclaimed, "What magnanimity!"'
+
+This is the longest and most elaborate version of his own story that
+Byron ever published; but he busied himself with many others, projecting
+at one time a Spanish romance, in which the same story is related in the
+same transparent manner: but this he was dissuaded from printing.  The
+booksellers, however, made a good speculation in publishing what they
+called his domestic poems; that is, poems bearing more or less relation
+to this subject.
+
+Every person with whom he became acquainted with any degree of intimacy
+was made familiar with his side of the story.  Moore's Biography is from
+first to last, in its representations, founded upon Byron's
+communicativeness, and Lady Byron's silence; and the world at last
+settled down to believing that the account so often repeated, and never
+contradicted, must be substantially a true one.
+
+The true history of Lord and Lady Byron has long been perfectly
+understood in many circles in England; but the facts were of a nature
+that could not be made public.  While there was a young daughter living
+whose future might be prejudiced by its recital, and while there were
+other persons on whom the disclosure of the real truth would have been
+crushing as an avalanche, Lady Byron's only course was the perfect
+silence in which she took refuge, and those sublime works of charity and
+mercy to which she consecrated her blighted early life.
+
+But the time is now come when the truth may be told.  All the actors in
+the scene have disappeared from the stage of mortal existence, and
+passed, let us have faith to hope, into a world where they would desire
+to expiate their faults by a late publication of the truth.
+
+No person in England, we think, would as yet take the responsibility of
+relating the true history which is to clear Lady Byron's memory; but, by
+a singular concurrence of circumstances, all the facts of the case, in
+the most undeniable and authentic form, were at one time placed in the
+hands of the writer of this sketch, with authority to make such use of
+them as she should judge best.  Had this melancholy history been allowed
+to sleep, no public use would have been made of them; but the appearance
+of a popular attack on the character of Lady Byron calls for a
+vindication, and the true story of her married life will therefore now be
+related.
+
+Lord Byron has described in one of his letters the impression left upon
+his mind by a young person whom he met one evening in society, and who
+attracted his attention by the simplicity of her dress, and a certain air
+of singular purity and calmness with which she surveyed the scene around
+her.
+
+On inquiry, he was told that this young person was Miss Milbanke, an only
+child, and one of the largest heiresses in England.
+
+Lord Byron was fond of idealising his experiences in poetry; and the
+friends of Lady Byron had no difficulty in recognising the portrait of
+Lady Byron, as she appeared at this time of her life, in his exquisite
+description of Aurora Raby:--
+
+                                         'There was
+   Indeed a certain fair and fairy one,
+      Of the best class, and better than her class,--
+   Aurora Raby, a young star who shone
+      O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass;
+   A lovely being scarcely formed or moulded;
+   A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.
+
+   .          .          .          .
+
+   Early in years, and yet more infantine
+      In figure, she had something of sublime
+   In eyes which sadly shone as seraphs' shine;
+      All youth, but with an aspect beyond time;
+   Radiant and grave, as pitying man's decline;
+   Mournful, but mournful of another's crime,
+   She looked as if she sat by Eden's door,
+   And grieved for those who could return no more.
+
+   .          .          .          .
+
+   She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew,
+      As seeking not to know it; silent, lone,
+   As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew,
+      And kept her heart serene within its zone.
+   There was awe in the homage which she drew;
+      Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne,
+   Apart from the surrounding world, and strong
+   In its own strength,--most strange in one so young!'
+
+Some idea of the course which their acquaintance took, and of the manner
+in which he was piqued into thinking of her, is given in a stanza or
+two:--
+
+   'The dashing and proud air of Adeline
+      Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze
+   Much as she would have seen a glow-worm shine;
+      Then turned unto the stars for loftier rays.
+   Juan was something she could not divine,
+      Being no sibyl in the new world's ways;
+   Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor,
+   Because she did not pin her faith on feature.
+
+   His fame too (for he had that kind of fame
+      Which sometimes plays the deuce with womankind,--
+   A heterogeneous mass of glorious blame,
+      Half virtues and whole vices being combined;
+   Faults which attract because they are not tame;
+      Follies tricked out so brightly that they blind),--
+   These seals upon her wax made no impression,
+   Such was her coldness or her self-possession.
+
+   Aurora sat with that indifference
+      Which piques a preux chevalier,--as it ought.
+   Of all offences, that's the worst offence
+      Which seems to hint you are not worth a thought.
+
+   .          .          .          .
+
+   To his gay nothings, nothing was replied,
+      Or something which was nothing, as urbanity
+   Required.  Aurora scarcely looked aside,
+      Nor even smiled enough for any vanity.
+   The Devil was in the girl!  Could it be pride,
+      Or modesty, or absence, or inanity?
+
+   .          .          .          .
+
+   Juan was drawn thus into some attentions,
+      Slight but select, and just enough to express,
+   To females of perspicuous comprehensions,
+      That he would rather make them more than less.
+   Aurora at the last (so history mentions,
+      Though probably much less a fact than guess)
+   So far relaxed her thoughts from their sweet prison
+   As once or twice to smile, if not to listen.
+
+   .          .          .          .
+
+   But Juan had a sort of winning way,
+      A proud humility, if such there be,
+   Which showed such deference to what females say,
+      As if each charming word were a decree.
+   His tact, too, tempered him from grave to gay,
+       And taught him when to be reserved or free.
+   He had the art of drawing people out,
+   Without their seeing what he was about.
+
+   Aurora, who in her indifference,
+      Confounded him in common with the crowd
+   Of flatterers, though she deemed he had more sense
+      Than whispering foplings or than witlings loud,
+   Commenced (from such slight things will great commence)
+      To feel that flattery which attracts the proud,
+   Rather by deference than compliment,
+   And wins even by a delicate dissent.
+
+   And then he had good looks: that point was carried
+      Nem. con. amongst the women.
+
+   .          .          .          .
+
+      Now, though we know of old that looks deceive,
+   And always have done, somehow these good looks,
+   Make more impression than the best of books.
+
+   Aurora, who looked more on books than faces,
+      Was very young, although so very sage:
+   Admiring more Minerva than the Graces,
+      Especially upon a printed page.
+   But Virtue's self, with all her tightest laces,
+      Has not the natural stays of strict old age;
+   And Socrates, that model of all duty,
+   Owned to a penchant, though discreet for beauty.'
+
+The presence of this high-minded, thoughtful, unworldly woman is
+described through two cantos of the wild, rattling 'Don Juan,' in a
+manner that shows how deeply the poet was capable of being affected by
+such an appeal to his higher nature.
+
+For instance, when Don Juan sits silent and thoughtful amid a circle of
+persons who are talking scandal, the poet says,--
+
+   ''Tis true, he saw Aurora look as though
+      She approved his silence: she perhaps mistook
+   Its motive for that charity we owe,
+      But seldom pay, the absent.
+
+   .          .          .          .
+
+   He gained esteem where it was worth the most;
+      And certainly Aurora had renewed
+   In him some feelings he had lately lost
+      Or hardened,--feelings which, perhaps ideal,
+   Are so divine that I must deem them real:--
+
+   The love of higher things and better days;
+      The unbounded hope and heavenly ignorance
+   Of what is called the world and the world's ways;
+      The moments when we gather from a glance
+   More joy than from all future pride or praise,
+      Which kindled manhood, but can ne'er entrance
+   The heart in an existence of its own
+   Of which another's bosom is the zone.
+
+   And full of sentiments sublime as billows
+      Heaving between this world and worlds beyond,
+   Don Juan, when the midnight hour of pillows
+      Arrived, retired to his.' . . .
+
+In all these descriptions of a spiritual unworldly nature acting on the
+spiritual and unworldly part of his own nature, every one who ever knew
+Lady Byron intimately must have recognised the model from which he drew,
+and the experience from which he spoke, even though nothing was further
+from his mind than to pay this tribute to the woman he had injured, and
+though before these lines, which showed how truly he knew her real
+character, had come one stanza of ribald, vulgar caricature, designed as
+a slight to her:--
+
+   'There was Miss Millpond, smooth as summer's sea,
+      That usual paragon, an only daughter,
+   Who seemed the cream of equanimity
+      'Till skimmed; and then there was some milk and water;
+   With a slight shade of blue, too, it might be,
+      Beneath the surface: but what did it matter?
+   Love's riotous; but marriage should have quiet,
+   And, being consumptive, live on a milk diet.'
+
+The result of Byron's intimacy with Miss Milbanke and the enkindling of
+his nobler feelings was an offer of marriage, which she, though at the
+time deeply interested in him, declined with many expressions of
+friendship and interest.  In fact, she already loved him, but had that
+doubt of her power to be to him all that a wife should be, which would be
+likely to arise in a mind so sensitively constituted and so unworldly.
+They, however, continued a correspondence as friends; on her part, the
+interest continually increased; on his, the transient rise of better
+feelings was choked and overgrown by the thorns of base unworthy
+passions.
+
+From the height at which he might have been happy as the husband of a
+noble woman, he fell into the depths of a secret adulterous intrigue with
+a blood relation, so near in consanguinity, that discovery must have been
+utter ruin and expulsion from civilised society.
+
+From henceforth, this damning guilty secret became the ruling force in
+his life; holding him with a morbid fascination, yet filling him with
+remorse and anguish, and insane dread of detection.  Two years after his
+refusal by Miss Milbanke, his various friends, seeing that for some cause
+he was wretched, pressed marriage upon him.
+
+Marriage has often been represented as the proper goal and terminus of a
+wild and dissipated career; and it has been supposed to be the appointed
+mission of good women to receive wandering prodigals, with all the rags
+and disgraces of their old life upon them, and put rings on their hands,
+and shoes on their feet, and introduce them, clothed and in their right
+minds, to an honourable career in society.
+
+Marriage was, therefore, universally recommended to Lord Byron by his
+numerous friends and well-wishers; and so he determined to marry, and, in
+an hour of reckless desperation, sat down and wrote proposals to two
+ladies.  One was declined: the other, which was accepted, was to Miss
+Milbanke.  The world knows well that he had the gift of expression, and
+will not be surprised that he wrote a very beautiful letter, and that the
+woman who had already learned to love him fell at once into the snare.
+
+Her answer was a frank, outspoken avowal of her love for him, giving
+herself to him heart and hand.  The good in Lord Byron was not so utterly
+obliterated that he could receive such a letter without emotion, or
+practise such unfairness on a loving, trusting heart without pangs of
+remorse.  He had sent the letter in mere recklessness; he had not
+seriously expected to be accepted; and the discovery of the treasure of
+affection which he had secured was like a vision of lost heaven to a soul
+in hell.
+
+But, nevertheless, in his letters written about the engagement, there are
+sufficient evidences that his self-love was flattered at the preference
+accorded him by so superior a woman, and one who had been so much sought.
+He mentions with an air of complacency that she has employed the last two
+years in refusing five or six of his acquaintance; that he had no idea
+she loved him, admitting that it was an old attachment on his part.  He
+dwells on her virtues with a sort of pride of ownership.  There is a sort
+of childish levity about the frankness of these letters, very
+characteristic of the man who skimmed over the deepest abysses with the
+lightest jests.  Before the world, and to his intimates, he was acting
+the part of the successful fiance, conscious all the while of the deadly
+secret that lay cold at the bottom of his heart.
+
+When he went to visit Miss Milbanke's parents as her accepted lover, she
+was struck with his manner and appearance: she saw him moody and gloomy,
+evidently wrestling with dark and desperate thoughts, and anything but
+what a happy and accepted lover should be.  She sought an interview with
+him alone, and told him that she had observed that he was not happy in
+the engagement; and magnanimously added, that, if on review, he found he
+had been mistaken in the nature of his feelings, she would immediately
+release him, and they should remain only friends.
+
+Overcome with the conflict of his feelings, Lord Byron fainted away.  Miss
+Milbanke was convinced that his heart must really be deeply involved in
+an attachment with reference to which he showed such strength of emotion,
+and she spoke no more of a dissolution of the engagement.
+
+There is no reason to doubt that Byron was, as he relates in his 'Dream,'
+profoundly agonized and agitated when he stood before God's altar with
+the trusting young creature whom he was leading to a fate so awfully
+tragic; yet it was not the memory of Mary Chaworth, but another guiltier
+and more damning memory, that overshadowed that hour.
+
+The moment the carriage-doors were shut upon the bridegroom and the
+bride, the paroxysm of remorse and despair--unrepentant remorse and angry
+despair--broke forth upon her gentle head:--
+
+'You might have saved me from this, madam!  You had all in your own power
+when I offered myself to you first.  Then you might have made me what you
+pleased; but now you will find that you have married a devil!'
+
+In Miss Martineau's Sketches, recently published, is an account of the
+termination of this wedding-journey, which brought them to one of Lady
+Byron's ancestral country seats, where they were to spend the honeymoon.
+
+Miss Martineau says,--
+
+'At the altar she did not know that she was a sacrifice; but before
+sunset of that winter day she knew it, if a judgment may be formed from
+her face, and attitude of despair, when she alighted from the carriage on
+the afternoon of her marriage-day.  It was not the traces of tears which
+won the sympathy of the old butler who stood at the open door.  The
+bridegroom jumped out of the carriage and walked away.  The bride
+alighted, and came up the steps alone, with a countenance and frame
+agonized and listless with evident horror and despair.  The old servant
+longed to offer his arm to the young, lonely creature, as an assurance of
+sympathy and protection.  From this shock she certainly rallied, and
+soon.  The pecuniary difficulties of her new home were exactly what a
+devoted spirit like hers was fitted to encounter.  Her husband bore
+testimony, after the catastrophe, that a brighter being, a more
+sympathising and agreeable companion, never blessed any man's home.  When
+he afterwards called her cold and mathematical, and over-pious, and so
+forth, it was when public opinion had gone against him, and when he had
+discovered that her fidelity and mercy, her silence and magnanimity,
+might be relied on, so that he was at full liberty to make his part good,
+as far as she was concerned.
+
+'Silent she was even to her own parents, whose feelings she magnanimously
+spared.  She did not act rashly in leaving him, though she had been most
+rash in marrying him.'
+
+Not all at once did the full knowledge of the dreadful reality into which
+she had entered come upon the young wife.  She knew vaguely, from the
+wild avowals of the first hours of their marriage, that there was a
+dreadful secret of guilt; that Byron's soul was torn with agonies of
+remorse, and that he had no love to give to her in return for a love
+which was ready to do and dare all for him.  Yet bravely she addressed
+herself to the task of soothing and pleasing and calming the man whom she
+had taken 'for better or for worse.'
+
+Young and gifted; with a peculiar air of refined and spiritual beauty;
+graceful in every movement; possessed of exquisite taste; a perfect
+companion to his mind in all the higher walks of literary culture; and
+with that infinite pliability to all his varying, capricious moods which
+true love alone can give; bearing in her hand a princely fortune, which,
+with a woman's uncalculating generosity, was thrown at his feet,--there
+is no wonder that she might feel for a while as if she could enter the
+lists with the very Devil himself, and fight with a woman's weapons for
+the heart of her husband.
+
+There are indications scattered through the letters of Lord Byron, which,
+though brief indeed, showed that his young wife was making every effort
+to accommodate herself to him, and to give him a cheerful home.  One of
+the poems that he sends to his publisher about this time, he speaks of as
+being copied by her.  He had always the highest regard for her literary
+judgments and opinions; and this little incident shows that she was
+already associating herself in a wifely fashion with his aims as an
+author.
+
+The poem copied by her, however, has a sad meaning, which she afterwards
+learned to understand only too well:--
+
+   'There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
+   When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay:
+   'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone that fades so fast;
+   But the tender bloom of heart is gone e'er youth itself be past.
+   Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness
+   Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess:
+   The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
+   The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.'
+
+Only a few days before she left him for ever, Lord Byron sent Murray
+manuscripts, in Lady Byron's handwriting, of the 'Siege of Corinth,' and
+'Parisina,' and wrote,--
+
+'I am very glad that the handwriting was a favourable omen of the morale
+of the piece: but you must not trust to that; for my copyist would write
+out anything I desired, in all the ignorance of innocence.'
+
+There were lucid intervals in which Lord Byron felt the charm of his
+wife's mind, and the strength of her powers.  'Bell, you could be a poet
+too, if you only thought so,' he would say.  There were summer-hours in
+her stormy life, the memory of which never left her, when Byron was as
+gentle and tender as he was beautiful; when he seemed to be possessed by
+a good angel: and then for a little time all the ideal possibilities of
+his nature stood revealed.
+
+The most dreadful men to live with are those who thus alternate between
+angel and devil.  The buds of hope and love called out by a day or two of
+sunshine are frozen again and again, till the tree is killed.
+
+But there came an hour of revelation,--an hour when, in a manner which
+left no kind of room for doubt, Lady Byron saw the full depth of the
+abyss of infamy which her marriage was expected to cover, and understood
+that she was expected to be the cloak and the accomplice of this infamy.
+
+Many women would have been utterly crushed by such a disclosure; some
+would have fled from him immediately, and exposed and denounced the
+crime.  Lady Byron did neither.  When all the hope of womanhood died out
+of her heart, there arose within her, stronger, purer, and brighter, that
+immortal kind of love such as God feels for the sinner,--the love of
+which Jesus spoke, and which holds the one wanderer of more account than
+the ninety and nine that went not astray.  She would neither leave her
+husband nor betray him, nor yet would she for one moment justify his sin;
+and hence came two years of convulsive struggle, in which sometimes, for
+a while, the good angel seemed to gain ground, and then the evil one
+returned with sevenfold vehemence.
+
+Lord Byron argued his case with himself and with her with all the
+sophistries of his powerful mind.  He repudiated Christianity as
+authority; asserted the right of every human being to follow out what he
+called 'the impulses of nature.'  Subsequently he introduced into one of
+his dramas the reasoning by which he justified himself in incest.
+
+In the drama of 'Cain,' Adah, the sister and the wife of Cain, thus
+addresses him:--
+
+      'Cain, walk not with this spirit.
+   Bear with what we have borne, and love me: I
+   Love thee.
+
+   Lucifer.  More than thy mother and thy sire?
+
+   Adah.  I do.  Is that a sin, too?
+
+   Lucifer.                        No, not yet:
+   It one day will be in your children.
+
+   Adah.                           What!
+   Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch?
+
+   Lucifer.  Not as thou lovest Cain.
+
+   Adah.                           O my God!
+   Shall they not love, and bring forth things that love
+   Out of their love?  Have they not drawn their milk
+   Out of this bosom?  Was not he, their father,
+   Born of the same sole womb, in the same hour
+   With me?  Did we not love each other, and,
+   In multiplying our being, multiply
+   Things which will love each other as we love
+   Them?  And as I love thee, my Cain, go not
+   Forth with this spirit: he is not of ours.
+
+   Lucifer.  The sin I speak of is not of my making
+   And cannot be a sin in you, whate'er
+   It seems in those who will replace ye in
+   Mortality.
+
+   Adah.  What is the sin which is not
+   Sin in itself?  Can circumstance make sin
+   Of virtue?  If it doth, we are the slaves
+   Of'--
+
+Lady Byron, though slight and almost infantine in her bodily presence,
+had the soul, not only of an angelic woman, but of a strong reasoning
+man.  It was the writer's lot to know her at a period when she formed the
+personal acquaintance of many of the very first minds of England; but,
+among all with whom this experience brought her in connection, there was
+none who impressed her so strongly as Lady Byron.  There was an almost
+supernatural power of moral divination, a grasp of the very highest and
+most comprehensive things, that made her lightest opinions singularly
+impressive.  No doubt, this result was wrought out in a great degree from
+the anguish and conflict of these two years, when, with no one to help or
+counsel her but Almighty God, she wrestled and struggled with fiends of
+darkness for the redemption of her husband's soul.
+
+She followed him through all his sophistical reasonings with a keener
+reason.  She besought and implored, in the name of his better nature, and
+by all the glorious things that he was capable of being and doing; and
+she had just power enough to convulse and shake and agonise, but not
+power enough to subdue.
+
+One of the first of living writers, in the novel of 'Romola,' has given,
+in her masterly sketch of the character of Tito, the whole history of the
+conflict of a woman like Lady Byron with a nature like that of her
+husband.  She has described a being full of fascinations and sweetnesses,
+full of generosities and of good-natured impulses; a nature that could
+not bear to give pain, or to see it in others, but entirely destitute of
+any firm moral principle; she shows how such a being, merely by yielding
+step by step to the impulses of passion, and disregarding the claims of
+truth and right, becomes involved in a fatality of evil, in which deceit,
+crime, and cruelty are a necessity, forcing him to persist in the basest
+ingratitude to the father who has done all for him, and hard-hearted
+treachery to the high-minded wife who has given herself to him wholly.
+
+There are few scenes in literature more fearfully tragic than the one
+between Romola and Tito, when he finally discovers that she knows him
+fully, and can be deceived by him no more.  Some such hour always must
+come for strong decided natures irrevocably pledged--one to the service
+of good, and the other to the slavery of evil.  The demoniac cried out,
+'What have I to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth?  Art thou come to
+torment me before the time?'  The presence of all-pitying purity and love
+was a torture to the soul possessed by the demon of evil.
+
+These two years in which Lady Byron was with all her soul struggling to
+bring her husband back to his better self were a series of passionate
+convulsions.
+
+During this time, such was the disordered and desperate state of his
+worldly affairs, that there were ten executions for debt levied on their
+family establishment; and it was Lady Byron's fortune each time which
+settled the account.
+
+Toward the last, she and her husband saw less and less of each other; and
+he came more and more decidedly under evil influences, and seemed to
+acquire a sort of hatred of her.
+
+Lady Byron once said significantly to a friend who spoke of some
+causeless dislike in another, 'My dear, I have known people to be hated
+for no other reason than because they impersonated conscience.'
+
+The biographers of Lord Byron, and all his apologists, are careful to
+narrate how sweet and amiable and obliging he was to everybody who
+approached him; and the saying of Fletcher, his man-servant, that
+'anybody could do anything with my Lord, except my Lady,' has often been
+quoted.
+
+The reason of all this will now be evident.  'My Lady' was the only one,
+fully understanding the deep and dreadful secrets of his life, who had
+the courage resolutely and persistently and inflexibly to plant herself
+in his way, and insist upon it, that, if he went to destruction, it
+should be in spite of her best efforts.
+
+He had tried his strength with her fully.  The first attempt had been to
+make her an accomplice by sophistry; by destroying her faith in
+Christianity, and confusing her sense of right and wrong, to bring her
+into the ranks of those convenient women who regard the marriage-tie only
+as a friendly alliance to cover licence on both sides.
+
+When her husband described to her the Continental latitude (the
+good-humoured marriage, in which complaisant couples mutually agreed to
+form the cloak for each other's infidelities), and gave her to understand
+that in this way alone she could have a peaceful and friendly life with
+him, she answered him simply, 'I am too truly your friend to do this.'
+
+When Lord Byron found that he had to do with one who would not yield, who
+knew him fully, who could not be blinded and could not be deceived, he
+determined to rid himself of her altogether.
+
+It was when the state of affairs between herself and her husband seemed
+darkest and most hopeless, that the only child of this union was born.
+Lord Byron's treatment of his wife during the sensitive period that
+preceded the birth of this child, and during her confinement, was marked
+by paroxysms of unmanly brutality, for which the only possible charity on
+her part was the supposition of insanity.  Moore sheds a significant
+light on this period, by telling us that, about this time, Byron was
+often drunk, day after day, with Sheridan.  There had been insanity in
+the family; and this was the plea which Lady Byron's love put in for him.
+She regarded him as, if not insane, at least so nearly approaching the
+boundaries of insanity as to be a subject of forbearance and tender pity;
+and she loved him with that love resembling a mother's, which good wives
+often feel when they have lost all faith in their husband's principles,
+and all hopes of their affections.  Still, she was in heart and soul his
+best friend; true to him with a truth which he himself could not shake.
+
+In the verses addressed to his daughter, Lord Byron speaks of her as
+
+   'The child of love, though born in bitterness,
+   And nurtured in convulsion.'
+
+A day or two after the birth of this child, Lord Byron came suddenly into
+Lady Byron's room, and told her that her mother was dead.  It was an
+utter falsehood; but it was only one of the many nameless injuries and
+cruelties by which he expressed his hatred of her.  A short time after
+her confinement, she was informed by him, in a note, that, as soon as she
+was able to travel, she must go; that he could not and would not longer
+have her about him; and, when her child was only five weeks old, he
+carried this threat of expulsion into effect.
+
+Here we will insert briefly Lady Byron's own account (the only one she
+ever gave to the public) of this separation.  The circumstances under
+which this brief story was written are affecting.
+
+Lord Byron was dead.  The whole account between him and her was closed
+for ever in this world.  Moore's 'Life' had been prepared, containing
+simply and solely Lord Byron's own version of their story.  Moore sent
+this version to Lady Byron, and requested to know if she had any remarks
+to make upon it.  In reply, she sent a brief statement to him,--the first
+and only one that had come from her during all the years of the
+separation, and which appears to have mainly for its object the
+exculpation of her father and mother from the charge, made by the poet,
+of being the instigators of the separation.
+
+In this letter, she says, with regard to their separation,--
+
+'The facts are, I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of my
+father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816.  LORD BYRON HAD
+SIGNIFIED TO ME IN WRITING, JAN. 6, HIS ABSOLUTE DESIRE THAT I SHOULD
+LEAVE LONDON ON THE EARLIEST DAY THAT I COULD CONVENIENTLY FIX.  It was
+not safe for me to undertake the fatigue of a journey sooner than the
+15th.  Previously to my departure, it had been strongly impressed upon my
+mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of insanity.  This opinion
+was derived, in a great measure, from the communications made me by his
+nearest relatives and personal attendant, who had more opportunity than
+myself for observing him during the latter part of my stay in town.  It
+was even represented to me that he was in danger of destroying himself.
+
+'With the concurrence of his family, I had consulted Dr. Baillie as a
+friend (Jan. 8) respecting the supposed malady.  On acquainting him with
+the state of the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave
+London, Dr. Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable as an
+experiment, assuming the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not
+having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive opinion
+on that point.  He enjoined that, in correspondence with Lord Byron, I
+should avoid all but light and soothing topics.  Under these impressions,
+I left London, determined to follow the advice given by Dr. Baillie.
+Whatever might have been the conduct of Lord Byron toward me from the
+time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to be in a state of mental
+alienation, it was not for me, nor for any person of common humanity, to
+manifest at that moment a sense of injury.'
+
+Nothing more than this letter from Lady Byron is necessary to
+substantiate the fact, that she did not leave her husband, but was driven
+from him,--driven from him that he might give himself up to the guilty
+infatuation that was consuming him, without being tortured by her
+imploring face, and by the silent power of her presence and her prayers.
+
+For a long time before this, she had seen little of him.  On the day of
+her departure, she passed by the door of his room, and stopped to caress
+his favourite spaniel, which was lying there; and she confessed to a
+friend the weakness of feeling a willingness even to be something as
+humble as that poor little creature, might she only be allowed to remain
+and watch over him.  She went into the room where he and the partner of
+his sins were sitting together, and said, 'Byron, I come to say goodbye,'
+offering, at the same time, her hand.
+
+Lord Byron put his hands behind him, retreated to the mantel-piece, and,
+looking on the two that stood there, with a sarcastic smile said, 'When
+shall we three meet again?'  Lady Byron answered, 'In heaven, I trust'.
+And those were her last words to him on earth.
+
+Now, if the reader wishes to understand the real talents of Lord Byron
+for deception and dissimulation, let him read, with this story in his
+mind, the 'Fare thee well,' which he addressed to Lady Byron through the
+printer:--
+
+   'Fare thee well; and if for ever,
+      Still for ever fare thee well!
+   Even though unforgiving, never
+      'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
+
+   Would that breast were bared before thee
+      Where thy head so oft hath lain,
+   While that placid sleep came o'er thee
+      Thou canst never know again!
+
+   Though my many faults defaced me,
+      Could no other arm be found
+   Than the one which once embraced me
+      To inflict a careless wound?'
+
+The re-action of society against him at the time of the separation from
+his wife was something which he had not expected, and for which, it
+appears, he was entirely unprepared.  It broke up the guilty intrigue and
+drove him from England.  He had not courage to meet or endure it.  The
+world, to be sure, was very far from suspecting what the truth was: but
+the tide was setting against him with such vehemence as to make him
+tremble every hour lest the whole should be known; and henceforth, it
+became a warfare of desperation to make his story good, no matter at
+whose expense.
+
+He had tact enough to perceive at first that the assumption of the
+pathetic and the magnanimous, and general confessions of faults,
+accompanied with admissions of his wife's goodness, would be the best
+policy in his case.  In this mood, he thus writes to Moore:--
+
+'The fault was not in my choice (unless in choosing at all); for I do not
+believe (and I must say it in the very dregs of all this bitter business)
+that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more
+amiable, agreeable being than Lady Byron.  I never had, nor can have, any
+reproach to make her while with me.  Where there is blame, it belongs to
+myself.'
+
+As there must be somewhere a scapegoat to bear the sin of the affair,
+Lord Byron wrote a poem called 'A Sketch,' in which he lays the blame of
+stirring up strife on a friend and former governess of Lady Byron's; but
+in this sketch he introduces the following just eulogy on Lady Byron:--
+
+      'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind
+   Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
+   Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,
+   Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,
+   Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
+   On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
+   Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
+   Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,
+   Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,
+   Nor virtue teach austerity,--till now;
+   Serenely purest of her sex that live,
+   But wanting one sweet weakness,--to forgive;
+   Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,
+   She deemed that all could be like her below:
+   Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend;
+   For Virtue pardons those she would amend.'
+
+In leaving England, Lord Byron first went to Switzerland, where he
+conceived and in part wrote out the tragedy of 'Manfred.'  Moore speaks
+of his domestic misfortunes, and the sufferings which he underwent at
+this time, as having influence in stimulating his genius, so that he was
+enabled to write with a greater power.
+
+Anybody who reads the tragedy of 'Manfred' with this story in his mind
+will see that it is true.
+
+The hero is represented as a gloomy misanthrope, dwelling with impenitent
+remorse on the memory of an incestuous passion which has been the
+destruction of his sister for this life and the life to come, but which,
+to the very last gasp, he despairingly refuses to repent of, even while
+he sees the fiends of darkness rising to take possession of his departing
+soul.  That Byron knew his own guilt well, and judged himself severely,
+may be gathered from passages in this poem, which are as powerful as
+human language can be made; for instance this part of the 'incantation,'
+which Moore says was written at this time:--
+
+   'Though thy slumber may be deep,
+   Yet thy spirit shall not sleep:
+   There are shades which will not vanish;
+   There are thoughts thou canst not banish.
+   By a power to thee unknown,
+   Thou canst never be alone:
+   Thou art wrapt as with a shroud;
+   Thou art gathered in a cloud;
+   And for ever shalt thou dwell
+   In the spirit of this spell.
+
+                .          .          .          .
+
+   From thy false tears I did distil
+   An essence which had strength to kill;
+   From thy own heart I then did wring
+   The black blood in its blackest spring;
+   From thy own smile I snatched the snake,
+   For there it coiled as in a brake;
+   From thy own lips I drew the charm
+   Which gave all these their chiefest harm:
+   In proving every poison known,
+   I found the strongest was thine own.
+
+   By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
+   By thy unfathomed gulfs of guile,
+   By that most seeming virtuous eye,
+   By thy shut soul's hypocrisy,
+   By the perfection of thine art
+   Which passed for human thine own heart,
+   By thy delight in other's pain,
+   And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
+   I call upon thee, and compel
+   Thyself to be thy proper hell!'
+
+Again: he represents Manfred as saying to the old abbot, who seeks to
+bring him to repentance,--
+
+   'Old man, there is no power in holy men,
+   Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form
+   Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,
+   Nor agony, nor greater than all these,
+   The innate tortures of that deep despair,
+   Which is remorse without the fear of hell,
+   But, all in all sufficient to itself,
+   Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise
+   From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense
+   Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge
+   Upon itself: there is no future pang
+   Can deal that justice on the self-condemned
+   He deals on his own soul.'
+
+And when the abbot tells him,
+
+      'All this is well;
+   For this will pass away, and be succeeded
+   By an auspicious hope, which shall look up
+   With calm assurance to that blessed place
+   Which all who seek may win, whatever be
+   Their earthly errors,'
+
+he answers,
+
+   'It is too late.'
+
+Then the old abbot soliloquises:--
+
+   'This should have been a noble creature: he
+   Hath all the energy which would have made
+   A goodly frame of glorious elements,
+   Had they been wisely mingled; as it is,
+   It is an awful chaos,--light and darkness,
+   And mind and dust, and passions and pure thoughts,
+   Mixed, and contending without end or order.'
+
+The world can easily see, in Moore's Biography, what, after this, was the
+course of Lord Byron's life; how he went from shame to shame, and
+dishonour to dishonour, and used the fortune which his wife brought him
+in the manner described in those private letters which his biographer was
+left to print.  Moore, indeed, says Byron had made the resolution not to
+touch his lady's fortune; but adds, that it required more self-command
+than he possessed to carry out so honourable a purpose.
+
+Lady Byron made but one condition with him.  She had him in her power;
+and she exacted that the unhappy partner of his sins should not follow
+him out of England, and that the ruinous intrigue should be given up.  Her
+inflexibility on this point kept up that enmity which was constantly
+expressing itself in some publication or other, and which drew her and
+her private relations with him before the public.
+
+The story of what Lady Byron did with the portion of her fortune which
+was reserved to her is a record of noble and skilfully administered
+charities.  Pitiful and wise and strong, there was no form of human
+suffering or sorrow that did not find with her refuge and help.  She gave
+not only systematically, but also impulsively.
+
+Miss Martineau claims for her the honour of having first invented
+practical schools, in which the children of the poor were turned into
+agriculturists, artizans, seamstresses, and good wives for poor men.
+While she managed with admirable skill and economy permanent institutions
+of this sort, she was always ready to relieve suffering in any form.  The
+fugitive slaves William and Ellen Crafts, escaping to England, were
+fostered by her protecting care.
+
+In many cases where there was distress or anxiety from poverty among
+those too self-respecting to make their sufferings known, the delicate
+hand of Lady Byron ministered to the want with a consideration which
+spared the most refined feelings.
+
+As a mother, her course was embarrassed by peculiar trials.  The daughter
+inherited from the father not only brilliant talents, but a restlessness
+and morbid sensibility which might be too surely traced to the storms and
+agitations of the period in which she was born.  It was necessary to
+bring her up in ignorance of the true history of her mother's life; and
+the consequence was that she could not fully understand that mother.
+
+During her early girlhood, her career was a source of more anxiety than
+of comfort.  She married a man of fashion, ran a brilliant course as a
+gay woman of fashion, and died early of a lingering and painful disease.
+
+In the silence and shaded retirement of the sick-room, the daughter came
+wholly back to her mother's arms and heart; and it was on that mother's
+bosom that she leaned as she went down into the dark valley.  It was that
+mother who placed her weak and dying hand in that of her Almighty
+Saviour.
+
+To the children left by her daughter, she ministered with the
+faithfulness of a guardian angel; and it is owing to her influence that
+those who yet remain are among the best and noblest of mankind.
+
+The person whose relations with Byron had been so disastrous, also, in
+the latter years of her life, felt Lady Byron's loving and ennobling
+influences, and, in her last sickness and dying hours, looked to her for
+consolation and help.
+
+There was an unfortunate child of sin, born with the curse upon her, over
+whose wayward nature Lady Byron watched with a mother's tenderness.  She
+was the one who could have patience when the patience of every one else
+failed; and though her task was a difficult one, from the strange
+abnormal propensities to evil in the object of her cares, yet Lady Byron
+never faltered, and never gave over, till death took the responsibility
+from her hands.
+
+During all this trial, strange to say, her belief that the good in Lord
+Byron would finally conquer was unshaken.
+
+To a friend who said to her, 'Oh! how could you love him?' she answered
+briefly, 'My dear, there was the angel in him.'  It is in us all.
+
+It was in this angel that she had faith.  It was for the deliverance of
+this angel from degradation and shame and sin that she unceasingly
+prayed.  She read every work that Byron wrote--read it with a deeper
+knowledge than any human being but herself could possess.  The ribaldry
+and the obscenity and the insults with which he strove to make her
+ridiculous in the world fell at her pitying feet unheeded.
+
+When he broke away from all this unworthy life to devote himself to a
+manly enterprise for the redemption of Greece, she thought that she saw
+the beginning of an answer to her prayers.  Even although one of his
+latest acts concerning her was to repeat to Lady Blessington the false
+accusation which made Lady Byron the author of all his errors, she still
+had hopes from the one step taken in the right direction.
+
+In the midst of these hopes came the news of his sudden death.  On his
+death-bed, it is well-known that he called his confidential English
+servant to him, and said to him, 'Go to my sister; tell her--Go to Lady
+Byron,--you will see her,--and say'--
+
+Here followed twenty minutes of indistinct mutterings, in which the names
+of his wife, daughter, and sister, frequently occurred.  He then said,
+'Now I have told you all.'
+
+'My lord,' replied Fletcher, 'I have not understood a word your lordship
+has been saying.'
+
+'Not understand me!' exclaimed Lord Byron with a look of the utmost
+distress: 'what a pity!  Then it is too late,--all is over!'  He
+afterwards, says Moore, tried to utter a few words, of which none were
+intelligible except 'My sister--my child.'
+
+When Fletcher returned to London, Lady Byron sent for him, and walked the
+room in convulsive struggles to repress her tears and sobs, while she
+over and over again strove to elicit something from him which should
+enlighten her upon what that last message had been; but in vain: the
+gates of eternity were shut in her face, and not a word had passed to
+tell her if he had repented.
+
+For all that, Lady Byron never doubted his salvation.  Ever before her,
+during the few remaining years of her widowhood, was the image of her
+husband, purified and ennobled, with the shadows of earth for ever
+dissipated, the stains of sin for ever removed; 'the angel in him,' as
+she expressed it, 'made perfect, according to its divine ideal.'
+
+Never has more divine strength of faith and love existed in woman.  Out
+of the depths of her own loving and merciful nature, she gained such
+views of the divine love and mercy as made all hopes possible.  There was
+no soul of whose future Lady Byron despaired,--such was her boundless
+faith in the redeeming power of love.
+
+After Byron's death, the life of this delicate creature--so frail in body
+that she seemed always hovering on the brink of the eternal world, yet so
+strong in spirit, and so unceasing in her various ministries of mercy--was
+a miracle of mingled weakness and strength.
+
+To talk with her seemed to the writer of this sketch the nearest possible
+approach to talking with one of the spirits of the just made perfect.
+
+She was gentle, artless; approachable as a little child; with ready,
+outflowing sympathy for the cares and sorrows and interests of all who
+approached her; with a naive and gentle playfulness, that adorned,
+without hiding, the breadth and strength of her mind; and, above all,
+with a clear, divining, moral discrimination; never mistaking wrong for
+right in the slightest shade, yet with a mercifulness that made allowance
+for every weakness, and pitied every sin.
+
+There was so much of Christ in her, that to have seen her seemed to be to
+have drawn near to heaven.  She was one of those few whom absence cannot
+estrange from friends; whose mere presence in this world seems always a
+help to every generous thought, a strength to every good purpose, a
+comfort in every sorrow.
+
+Living so near the confines of the spiritual world, she seemed already to
+see into it: hence the words of comfort which she addressed to a friend
+who had lost a son:--
+
+'Dear friend, remember, as long as our loved ones are in God's world,
+they are in ours.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+It has been thought by some friends who have read the proof-sheets of the
+foregoing that the author should give more specifically her authority for
+these statements.
+
+The circumstances which led the writer to England at a certain time
+originated a friendship and correspondence with Lady Byron, which was
+always regarded as one of the greatest acquisitions of that visit.
+
+On the occasion of a second visit to England, in 1856, the writer
+received a note from Lady Byron, indicating that she wished to have some
+private, confidential conversation upon important subjects, and inviting
+her, for that purpose, to spend a day with her at her country-seat near
+London,
+
+The writer went and spent a day with Lady Byron alone; and the object of
+the invitation was explained to her.  Lady Byron was in such a state of
+health, that her physicians had warned her that she had very little time
+to live.  She was engaged in those duties and retrospections which every
+thoughtful person finds necessary, when coming deliberately, and with
+open eyes, to the boundaries of this mortal life.
+
+At that time, there was a cheap edition of Byron's works in
+contemplation, intended to bring his writings into circulation among the
+masses; and the pathos arising from the story of his domestic misfortunes
+was one great means relied on for giving it currency.
+
+Under these circumstances, some of Lady Byron's friends had proposed the
+question to her, whether she had not a responsibility to society for the
+truth; whether she did right to allow these writings to gain influence
+over the popular mind by giving a silent consent to what she knew to be
+utter falsehoods.
+
+Lady Byron's whole life had been passed in the most heroic
+self-abnegation and self-sacrifice: and she had now to consider whether
+one more act of self-denial was not required of her before leaving this
+world; namely, to declare the absolute truth, no matter at what expense
+to her own feelings.
+
+For this reason, it was her desire to recount the whole history to a
+person of another country, and entirely out of the sphere of personal and
+local feelings which might be supposed to influence those in the country
+and station in life where the events really happened, in order that she
+might be helped by such a person's views in making up an opinion as to
+her own duty.
+
+The interview had almost the solemnity of a death-bed avowal.  Lady Byron
+stated the facts which have been embodied in this article, and gave to
+the writer a paper containing a brief memorandum of the whole, with the
+dates affixed.
+
+We have already spoken of that singular sense of the reality of the
+spiritual world which seemed to encompass Lady Byron during the last part
+of her life, and which made her words and actions seem more like those of
+a blessed being detached from earth than of an ordinary mortal.  All her
+modes of looking at things, all her motives of action, all her
+involuntary exhibitions of emotion, were so high above any common level,
+and so entirely regulated by the most unworldly causes, that it would
+seem difficult to make the ordinary world understand exactly how the
+thing seemed to lie before her mind.  What impressed the writer more
+strongly than anything else was Lady Byron's perfect conviction that her
+husband was now a redeemed spirit; that he looked back with pain and
+shame and regret on all that was unworthy in his past life; and that, if
+he could speak or could act in the case, he would desire to prevent the
+further circulation of base falsehoods, and of seductive poetry, which
+had been made the vehicle of morbid and unworthy passions.
+
+Lady Byron's experience had led her to apply the powers of her strong
+philosophical mind to the study of mental pathology: and she had become
+satisfied that the solution of the painful problem which first occurred
+to her as a young wife, was, after all, the true one; namely, that Lord
+Byron had been one of those unfortunately constituted persons in whom the
+balance of nature is so critically hung, that it is always in danger of
+dipping towards insanity; and that, in certain periods of his life, he
+was so far under the influence of mental disorder as not to be fully
+responsible for his actions.
+
+She went over with a brief and clear analysis the history of his whole
+life as she had thought it out during the lonely musings of her
+widowhood.  She dwelt on the ancestral causes that gave him a nature of
+exceptional and dangerous susceptibility.  She went through the
+mismanagements of his childhood, the history of his school-days, the
+influence of the ordinary school-course of classical reading on such a
+mind as his.  She sketched boldly and clearly the internal life of the
+young men of the time, as she, with her purer eyes, had looked through
+it; and showed how habits, which, with less susceptible fibre, and
+coarser strength of nature, were tolerable for his companions, were
+deadly to him, unhinging his nervous system, and intensifying the dangers
+of ancestral proclivities.  Lady Byron expressed the feeling too, that
+the Calvinistic theology, as heard in Scotland, had proved in his case,
+as it often does in certain minds, a subtle poison.  He never could
+either disbelieve or become reconciled to it; and the sore problems it
+proposes embittered his spirit against Christianity.
+
+'The worst of it is, I do believe,' he would often say with violence,
+when he had been employing all his powers of reason, wit, and ridicule
+upon these subjects.
+
+Through all this sorrowful history was to be seen, not the care of a
+slandered woman to make her story good, but the pathetic anxiety of a
+mother, who treasures every particle of hope, every intimation of good,
+in the son whom she cannot cease to love.  With indescribable
+resignation, she dwelt on those last hours, those words addressed to her,
+never to be understood till repeated in eternity.
+
+But all this she looked upon as for ever past; believing, that, with the
+dropping of the earthly life, these morbid impulses and influences
+ceased, and that higher nature which he often so beautifully expressed in
+his poems became the triumphant one.
+
+While speaking on this subject, her pale ethereal face became luminous
+with a heavenly radiance; there was something so sublime in her belief in
+the victory of love over evil, that faith with her seemed to have become
+sight.  She seemed so clearly to perceive the divine ideal of the man she
+had loved, and for whose salvation she had been called to suffer and
+labour and pray, that all memories of his past unworthiness fell away,
+and were lost.
+
+Her love was never the doting fondness of weak women; it was the
+appreciative and discriminating love by which a higher nature recognised
+god-like capabilities under all the dust and defilement of misuse and
+passion: and she never doubted that the love which in her was so strong,
+that no injury or insult could shake it, was yet stronger in the God who
+made her capable of such a devotion, and that in him it was accompanied
+by power to subdue all things to itself.
+
+The writer was so impressed and excited by the whole scene and recital,
+that she begged for two or three days to deliberate before forming any
+opinion.  She took the memorandum with her, returned to London, and gave
+a day or two to the consideration of the subject.  The decision which she
+made was chiefly influenced by her reverence and affection for Lady
+Byron.  She seemed so frail, she had suffered so much, she stood at such
+a height above the comprehension of the coarse and common world, that the
+author had a feeling that it would almost be like violating a shrine to
+ask her to come forth from the sanctuary of a silence where she had so
+long abode, and plead her cause.  She wrote to Lady Byron, that while
+this act of justice did seem to be called for, and to be in some respects
+most desirable, yet, as it would involve so much that was painful to her,
+the writer considered that Lady Byron would be entirely justifiable in
+leaving the truth to be disclosed after her death; and recommended that
+all the facts necessary should be put in the hands of some person, to be
+so published.
+
+Years passed on.  Lady Byron lingered four years after this interview, to
+the wonder of her physicians and all her friends.
+
+After Lady Byron's death, the writer looked anxiously, hoping to see a
+Memoir of the person whom she considered the most remarkable woman that
+England has produced in the century.  No such Memoir has appeared on the
+part of her friends; and the mistress of Lord Byron has the ear of the
+public, and is sowing far and wide unworthy slanders, which are eagerly
+gathered up and read by an undiscriminating community.
+
+There may be family reasons in England which prevent Lady Byron's friends
+from speaking.  But Lady Byron has an American name and an American
+existence; and reverence for pure womanhood is, we think, a national
+characteristic of the American; and, so far as this country is concerned,
+we feel that the public should have this refutation of the slanders of
+the Countess Guiccioli's book.
+
+
+
+LORD LINDSAY'S LETTER TO THE LONDON 'TIMES.'
+TO THE EDITOR OF 'THE TIMES.'
+
+
+SIR,--I have waited in expectation of a categorical denial of the
+horrible charge brought by Mrs. Beecher Stowe against Lord Byron and his
+sister on the alleged authority of the late Lady Byron.  Such denial has
+been only indirectly given by the letter of Messrs. Wharton and Fords in
+your impression of yesterday.  That letter is sufficient to prove that
+Lady Byron never contemplated the use made of her name, and that her
+descendants and representatives disclaim any countenance of Mrs. B.
+Stowe's article; but it does not specifically meet Mrs. Stowe's
+allegation, that Lady Byron, in conversing with her thirteen years ago,
+affirmed the charge now before us.  It remains open, therefore, to a
+scandal-loving world, to credit the calumny through the advantage of this
+flaw, involuntary, I believe, in the answer produced against it.  My
+object in addressing you is to supply that deficiency by proving that
+what is now stated on Lady Byron's supposed authority is at variance, in
+all respects, with what she stated immediately after the separation, when
+everything was fresh in her memory in relation to the time during which,
+according to Mrs. B. Stowe, she believed that Byron and his sister were
+living together in guilt.  I publish this evidence with reluctance, but
+in obedience to that higher obligation of justice to the voiceless and
+defenceless dead which bids me break through a reserve that otherwise I
+should have held sacred.  The Lady Byron of 1818 would, I am certain,
+have sanctioned my doing so, had she foreseen the present unparalleled
+occasion, and the bar that the conditions of her will present (as I infer
+from Messrs Wharton and Fords' letter) against any fuller communication.
+Calumnies such as the present sink deep and with rapidity into the public
+mind, and are not easily eradicated.  The fame of one of our greatest
+poets, and that of the kindest and truest and most constant friend that
+Byron ever had, is at stake; and it will not do to wait for revelations
+from the fountain-head, which are not promised, and possibly may never
+reach us.
+
+The late Lady Anne Barnard, who died in 1825, a contemporary and friend
+of Burke, Windham, Dundas, and a host of the wise and good of that
+generation, and remembered in letters as the authoress of 'Auld Robin
+Gray,' had known the late Lady Byron from infancy, and took a warm
+interest in her; holding Lord Byron in corresponding repugnance, not to
+say prejudice, in consequence of what she believed to be his harsh and
+cruel treatment of her young friend.  I transcribe the following
+passages, and a letter from Lady Byron herself (written in 1818) from
+ricordi, or private family memoirs, in Lady Anne's autograph, now before
+me.  I include the letter, because, although treating only in general
+terms of the matter and causes of the separation, it affords collateral
+evidence bearing strictly upon the point of the credibility of the charge
+now in question:--
+
+'The separation of Lord and Lady Byron astonished the world, which
+believed him a reformed man as to his habits, and a becalmed man as to
+his remorses.  He had written nothing that appeared after his marriage
+till the famous "Fare thee well," which had the power of compelling those
+to pity the writer who were not well aware that he was not the unhappy
+person he affected to be.  Lady Byron's misery was whispered soon after
+her marriage and his ill usage, but no word transpired, no sign escaped,
+from her.  She gave birth, shortly, to a daughter; and when she went, as
+soon as she was recovered, on a visit to her father's, taking her little
+Ada with her, no one knew that it was to return to her lord no more.  At
+that period, a severe fit of illness had confined me to bed for two
+months.  I heard of Lady Byron's distress; of the pains he took to give a
+harsh impression of her character to the world.  I wrote to her, and
+entreated her to come and let me see and hear her, if she conceived my
+sympathy or counsel could be any comfort to her.  She came; but what a
+tale was unfolded by this interesting young creature, who had so fondly
+hoped to have made a young man of genius and romance (as she supposed)
+happy!  They had not been an hour in the carriage which conveyed them
+from the church, when, breaking into a malignant sneer, "Oh! what a dupe
+you have been to your imagination!  How is it possible a woman of your
+sense could form the wild hope of reforming me?  Many are the tears you
+will have to shed ere that plan is accomplished.  It is enough for me
+that you are my wife for me to hate you!  If you were the wife of any
+other man, I own you might have charms," etc.  I who listened was
+astonished.  "How could you go on after this," said I, "my dear?  Why did
+you not return to your father's?"  "Because I had not a conception he was
+in earnest; because I reckoned it a bad jest, and told him so,--that my
+opinions of him were very different from his of himself, otherwise he
+would not find me by his side.  He laughed it over when he saw me appear
+hurt: and I forgot what had passed, till forced to remember it.  I
+believe he was pleased with me, too, for a little while.  I suppose it
+had escaped his memory that I was his wife."  But she described the
+happiness they enjoyed to have been unequal and perturbed.  Her
+situation, in a short time, might have entitled her to some tenderness;
+but she made no claim on him for any.  He sometimes reproached her for
+the motives that had induced her to marry him: all was "vanity, the
+vanity of Miss Milbanke carrying the point of reforming Lord Byron!  He
+always knew her inducements; her pride shut her eyes to his: he wished to
+build up his character and his fortunes; both were somewhat deranged: she
+had a high name, and would have a fortune worth his attention,--let her
+look to that for his motives!"--"O Byron, Byron!" she said, "how you
+desolate me!"  He would then accuse himself of being mad, and throw
+himself on the ground in a frenzy, which she believed was affected to
+conceal the coldness and malignity of his heart,--an affectation which at
+that time never failed to meet with the tenderest commiseration.  I could
+find by some implications, not followed up by me, lest she might have
+condemned herself afterwards for her involuntary disclosures, that he
+soon attempted to corrupt her principles, both with respect to her own
+conduct and her latitude for his.  She saw the precipice on which she
+stood, and kept his sister with her as much as possible.  He returned in
+the evenings from the haunts of vice, where he made her understand he had
+been, with manners so profligate!  "O the wretch!" said I.  "And had he
+no moments of remorse?"  "Sometimes he appeared to have them.  One night,
+coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me so indignantly
+collected, and bearing all with such a determined calmness, that a rush
+of remorse seemed to come over him.  He called himself a monster, though
+his sister was present, and threw himself in agony at my feet.  I could
+not--no--I could not forgive him such injuries.  He had lost me for ever!
+Astonished at the return of virtue, my tears, I believe, flowed over his
+face, and I said, 'Byron, all is forgotten: never, never shall you hear
+of it more!'  He started up, and, folding his arms while he looked at me,
+burst into laughter.  'What do you mean?' said I.  'Only a philosophical
+experiment; that's all,' said he.  'I wished to ascertain the value of
+your resolutions.'"  I need not say more of this prince of duplicity,
+except that varied were his methods of rendering her wretched, even to
+the last.  When her lovely little child was born, and it was laid beside
+its mother on the bed, and he was informed he might see his daughter,
+after gazing at it with an exulting smile, this was the ejaculation that
+broke from him: "Oh, what an implement of torture have I acquired in
+you!"  Such he rendered it by his eyes and manner, keeping her in a
+perpetual alarm for its safety when in his presence.  All this reads
+madder than I believe he was: but she had not then made up her mind to
+disbelieve his pretended insanity, and conceived it best to intrust her
+secret with the excellent Dr. Baillie; telling him all that seemed to
+regard the state of her husband's mind, and letting his advice regulate
+her conduct.  Baillie doubted of his derangement; but, as he did not
+reckon his own opinion infallible, he wished her to take precautions as
+if her husband were so.  He recommended her going to the country, but to
+give him no suspicion of her intentions of remaining there, and, for a
+short time, to show no coldness in her letters, till she could better
+ascertain his state.  She went, regretting, as she told me, to wear any
+semblance but the truth.  A short time disclosed the story to the world.
+He acted the part of a man driven to despair by her inflexible resentment
+and by the arts of a governess (once a servant in the family) who hated
+him.  "I will give you," proceeds Lady Anne, "a few paragraphs
+transcribed from one of Lady Byron's own letters to me.  It is sorrowful
+to think, that, in a very little time, this young and amiable creature,
+wise, patient, and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one
+who reads Byron's works.  To rescue her from this, I preserved her
+letters; and, when she afterwards expressed a fear that any thing of her
+writings should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant
+by publication), I safely assured her that it never should.  But here
+this letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to
+herself:--
+
+'"I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last canto of
+'Childe Harold' may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.  It
+contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake; though his
+object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could thus be
+oppressed into eternal stupor.  I will hope, as you do, that it survives
+for his ultimate good.  It was the acuteness of his remorse, impenitent
+in its character, which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to
+spare every resemblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might
+have said to his conscience, 'You have made me wretched.'  I am decidedly
+of opinion that he is responsible.  He has wished to be thought partially
+deranged, or on the brink of it, to perplex observers, and prevent them
+from tracing effects to their real causes through all the intricacies of
+his conduct.  I was, as I told you, at one time the dupe of his acted
+insanity, and clung to the former delusions in regard to the motives that
+concerned me personally, till the whole system was laid bare.  He is the
+absolute monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did lives, for
+conquest, without more regard to their intrinsic value; considering them
+only as ciphers, which must derive all their import from the situation in
+which he places them, and the ends to which he adapts them with such
+consummate skill.  Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to
+give a better colour to his own character?  Because he is too good an
+actor to over-act, or to assume a moral garb which it would be easy to
+strip off.  In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle of
+his imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject
+with which his own character and interests are not identified: but by the
+introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene or time, he has
+enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system impenetrable except to a
+very few; and his constant desire of creating a sensation makes him not
+averse to be the object of wonder and curiosity, even though accompanied
+by some dark and vague suspicions.  Nothing has contributed more to the
+misunderstanding of his real character than the lonely grandeur in which
+he shrouds it, and his affectation of being above mankind, when he exists
+almost in their voice.  The romance of his sentiments is another feature
+of this mask of state.  I know no one more habitually destitute of that
+enthusiasm he so beautifully expresses, and to which he can work up his
+fancy chiefly by contagion.  I had heard he was the best of brothers, the
+most generous of friends; and I thought such feelings only required to be
+warmed and cherished into more diffusive benevolence.  Though these
+opinions are eradicated, and could never return but with the decay of my
+memory, you will not wonder if there are still moments when the
+association of feelings which arose from them soften and sadden my
+thoughts.  But I have not thanked you, dearest Lady Anne, for your
+kindness in regard to a principal object,--that of rectifying false
+impressions.  I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to
+injure Lord Byron in any way: for, though he would not suffer me to
+remain his wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and it
+was from considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations by
+which my own conduct might have been more fully justified.  It is not
+necessary to speak ill of his heart in general: it is sufficient that to
+me it was hard and impenetrable; that my own must have been broken before
+his could have been touched.  I would rather represent this as my
+misfortune than as his guilt; but surely that misfortune is not to be
+made my crime!  Such are my feelings: you will judge how to act.  His
+allusions to me in 'Childe Harold' are cruel and cold, but with such a
+semblance as to make me appear so, and to attract all sympathy to
+himself.  It is said in this poem that hatred of him will be taught as a
+lesson to his child.  I might appeal to all who have ever heard me speak
+of him, and still more to my own heart, to witness that there has been no
+moment when I have remembered injury otherwise than affectionately and
+sorrowfully.  It is not my duty to give way to hopeless and wholly
+unrequited affection; but, so long as I live, my chief struggle will
+probably be not to remember him too kindly.  I do not seek the sympathy
+of the world; but I wish to be known by those whose opinion is valuable,
+and whose kindness is clear to me.  Among such, my dear Lady Anne, you
+will ever be remembered by your truly affectionate,
+
+                                    '"A. BYRON."'
+
+It is the province of your readers, and of the world at large, to judge
+between the two testimonies now before them,--Lady Byron's in 1816 and
+1818, and that put forward in 1869 by Mrs. B. Stowe, as communicated by
+Lady Byron thirteen years ago.  In the face of the evidence now given,
+positive, negative, and circumstantial, there can be but two alternatives
+in the case: either Mrs. B. Stowe must have entirely misunderstood Lady
+Byron, and been thus led into error and misstatement; or we must conclude
+that, under the pressure of a lifelong and secret sorrow, Lady Byron's
+mind had become clouded with an hallucination in respect of the
+particular point in question.
+
+The reader will admire the noble but severe character displayed in Lady
+Byron's letter; but those who keep in view what her first impressions
+were, as above recorded, may probably place a more lenient interpretation
+than hers upon some of the incidents alleged to Byron's discredit.  I
+shall conclude with some remarks upon his character, written shortly
+after his death by a wise, virtuous, and charitable judge, the late Sir
+Walter Scott, likewise in a letter to Lady Anne Barnard:--
+
+'Fletcher's account of poor Byron is extremely interesting.  I had always
+a strong attachment to that unfortunate though most richly-gifted man,
+because I thought I saw that his virtues (and he had many) were his own;
+and his eccentricities the result of an irritable temperament, which
+sometimes approached nearly to mental disease.  Those who are gifted with
+strong nerves, a regular temper, and habitual self-command, are not,
+perhaps, aware how much of what they may think virtue they owe to
+constitution; and such are but too severe judges of men like Byron, whose
+mind, like a day of alternate storm and sunshine, is all dark shades and
+stray gleams of light, instead of the twilight gray which illuminates
+happier though less distinguished mortals.  I always thought, that, when
+a moral proposition was placed plainly before Lord Byron, his mind
+yielded a pleased and willing assent to it; but, if there was any side
+view given in the way of raillery or otherwise, he was willing enough to
+evade conviction . . . .  It augurs ill for the cause of Greece that this
+master-spirit should have been withdrawn from their assistance just as he
+was obtaining a complete ascendancy over their counsels.  I have seen
+several letters from the Ionian Islands, all of which unite in speaking
+in the highest praise of the wisdom and temperance of his counsels, and
+the ascendancy he was obtaining over the turbulent and ferocious chiefs
+of the insurgents.  I have some verses written by him on his last
+birthday: they breathe a spirit of affection towards his wife, and a
+desire of dying in battle, which seems like an anticipation of his
+approaching fate.'
+
+                   I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+                                           LINDSAY.
+
+DUNECHT, Sept. 3.
+
+
+
+DR. FORBES WINSLOW'S LETTER TO THE LONDON 'TIMES.'
+
+
+TO THE EDITOR.
+
+SIR,--Your paper of the 4th of September, containing an able and deeply
+interesting 'Vindication of Lord Byron,' has followed me to this place.
+With the general details of the 'True Story' (as it is termed) of Lady
+Byron's separation from her husband, as recorded in 'Macmillan's
+Magazine,' I have no desire or intention to grapple.  It is only with the
+hypothesis of insanity, as suggested by the clever writer of the
+'Vindication' to account for Lady Byron's sad revelations to Mrs. Beecher
+Stowe, with which I propose to deal.  I do not believe that the mooted
+theory of mental aberration can, in this case, be for a moment
+maintained.  If Lady Byron's statement of facts to Mrs. B. Stowe is to be
+viewed as the creation of a distempered fancy, a delusion or
+hallucination of an insane mind, what part of the narrative are we to
+draw the boundary-line between fact and delusion, sanity and insanity?
+Where are we to fix the point d'appui of the lunacy?  Again: is the
+alleged 'hallucination' to be considered as strictly confined to the idea
+that Lord Byron had committed the frightful sin of incest? or is the
+whole of the 'True Story' of her married life, as reproduced with such
+terrible minuteness by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, to be viewed as the delusion
+of a disordered fancy?  If Lady Byron was the subject of an
+'hallucination' with regard to her husband, I think it not unreasonable
+to conclude that the mental alienation existed on the day of her
+marriage.  If this proposition be accepted, the natural inference will
+be, that the details of the conversation which Lady Byron represents to
+have occurred between herself and Lord Byron as soon as they entered the
+carriage never took place.  Lord Byron is said to have remarked to Lady
+Byron, 'You might have prevented this (or words to this effect): you will
+now find that you have married a devil.  Is this alleged conversation to
+be viewed as fact, or fiction? evidence of sanity, or insanity?  Is the
+revelation which Lord Byron is said to have made to his wife of his
+'incestuous passion' another delusion, having no foundation except in his
+wife's disordered imagination?  Are his alleged attempts to justify to
+Lady Byron's mind the morale of the plea of 'Continental latitude--the
+good-humoured marriage, in which complaisant couples mutually agree to
+form the cloak for each other's infidelities,'--another morbid perversion
+of her imagination?  Did this conversation ever take place?  It will be
+difficult to separate one part of the 'True Story' from another, and
+maintain that this portion indicates insanity, and that portion
+represents sanity.  If we accept the hypothesis of hallucination, we are
+bound to view the whole of Lady Byron's conversations with Mrs. B. Stowe,
+and the written statement laid before her, as the wild and incoherent
+representations of a lunatic.  On the day when Lady Byron parted from her
+husband, did she enter his private room, and find him with the 'object of
+his guilty passion?' and did he say, as they parted, 'When shall we three
+meet again?'  Is this to be considered as an actual occurrence, or as
+another form of hallucination?  It is quite inconsistent with the theory
+of Lady Byron's insanity to imagine that her delusion was restricted to
+the idea of his having committed 'incest.'  In common fairness, we are
+bound to view the aggregate mental phenomena which she exhibited from the
+day of the marriage to their final separation and her death.  No person
+practically acquainted with the true characteristics of insanity would
+affirm, that, had this idea of 'incest' been an insane hallucination,
+Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which intervened between her
+unhappy marriage and death, have refrained from exhibiting her mental
+alienation, not only to her legal advisers and trustees, but to others,
+exacting no pledge of secrecy from them as to her disordered impressions.
+Lunatics do for a time, and for some special purpose, most cunningly
+conceal their delusions; but they have not the capacity to struggle for
+thirty-six years with a frightful hallucination, similar to the one Lady
+Byron is alleged to have had, without the insane state of mind becoming
+obvious to those with whom they are daily associating.  Neither is it
+consistent with experience to suppose that, if Lady Byron had been a
+monomaniac, her state of disordered understanding would have been
+restricted to one hallucination.  Her diseased brain, affecting the
+normal action of thought, would, in all probability, have manifested
+other symptoms besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.
+
+During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity
+(assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that of
+Lady Byron's.  In my experience, it is unique.  I never saw a patient
+with such a delusion.  If it should be established, by the statements of
+those who are the depositors of the secret (and they are now bound, in
+vindication of Lord Byron's memory, to deny, if they have the power of
+doing so, this most frightful accusation), that the idea of incest did
+unhappily cross Lady Byron's mind prior to her finally leaving him, it no
+doubt arose from a most inaccurate knowledge of facts and perfectly
+unjustifiable data, and was not, in the right psychological acceptation
+of the phrase, an insane hallucination.
+
+                    Sir, I remain your obedient servant,
+
+                               FORBES WINSLOW, M.D.
+
+ZARINGERHOF, FREIBURG-EN-BREISGAU, Sept. 8, 1869.
+
+                                 -----
+
+
+
+EXTRACT FROM LORD BYRON'S EXPUNGED LETTER.
+
+
+TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+                              'BOLOGNA, June 7, 1819.
+
+. . . 'Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr.
+Hobhouse's sheets of "Juan."  Don't wait for further answers from me, but
+address yours to Venice as usual.  I know nothing of my own movements.  I
+may return there in a few days, or not for some time; all this depends on
+circumstances.  I left Mr. Hoppner very well.  My daughter Allegra is
+well too, and is growing pretty: her hair is growing darker, and her eyes
+are blue.  Her temper and her ways, Mr. Hoppner says, are like mine, as
+well as her features: she will make, in that case, a manageable young
+lady.
+
+'I have never seen anything of Ada, the little Electra of my Mycenae . .
+. .  But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to
+see it.  I have at least seen ---- shivered, who was one of my assassins.
+When that man was doing his worst to uproot my whole family,--tree,
+branch, and blossoms; when, after taking my retainer, he went over to
+them; when he was bringing desolation on my hearth, and destruction on my
+household gods,--did he think that, in less than three years, a natural
+event, a severe domestic, but an expected and common calamity, would lay
+his carcass in a cross-road, or stamp his name in a verdict of lunacy?
+Did he (who in his sexagenary . . .) reflect or consider what my feelings
+must have been when wife and child and sister, and name and fame and
+country, were to be my sacrifice on his legal altar?--and this at a
+moment when my health was declining, my fortune embarrassed, and my mind
+had been shaken by many kinds of disappointment? while I was yet young,
+and might have reformed what might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved
+what was perplexing in my affairs?  But he is in his grave, and--What a
+long letter I have scribbled!' . . .
+
+* * * * *
+
+In order that the reader may measure the change of moral tone with regard
+to Lord Byron, wrought by the constant efforts of himself and his party,
+we give the two following extracts from 'Blackwood:'
+
+The first is 'Blackwood' in 1819, just after the publication of 'Don
+Juan:' the second is 'Blackwood' in 1825.
+
+'In the composition of this work, there is, unquestionably, a more
+thorough and intense infusion of genius and vice, power and profligacy,
+than in any poem which had ever before been written in the English, or,
+indeed, in any other modern language.  Had the wickedness been less
+inextricably mingled with the beauty and the grace and the strength of a
+most inimitable and incomprehensible Muse, our task would have been easy.
+'Don Juan' is by far the most admirable specimen of the mixture of ease,
+strength, gaiety, and seriousness, extant in the whole body of English
+poetry: the author has devoted his powers to the worst of purposes and
+passions; and it increases his guilt and our sorrow that he has devoted
+them entire.
+
+'The moral strain of the whole poem is pitched in the lowest key.  Love,
+honour, patriotism, religion, are mentioned only to be scoffed at, as if
+their sole resting-place were, or ought to be, in the bosoms of fools.  It
+appears, in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted every
+species of sensual gratification, having drained the cup of sin even to
+its bitterest dregs, were resolved to show us that he is no longer a
+human being, even in his frailties, but a cool, unconcerned fiend,
+laughing with a detestable glee over the whole of the better and worse
+elements of which human life is composed; treating well-nigh with equal
+derision the most pure of virtues, and the most odious of vices; dead
+alike to the beauty of the one, and the deformity of the other; a mere
+heartless despiser of that frail but noble humanity, whose type was never
+exhibited in a shape of more deplorable degradation than in his own
+contemptuously distinct delineation of himself.  To confess to his Maker,
+and weep over in secret agonies the wildest and most fantastic
+transgressions of heart and mind, is the part of a conscious sinner, in
+whom sin has not become the sole principle of life and action; but to lay
+bare to the eye of man and of woman all the hidden convulsions of a
+wicked spirit, and to do all this without one symptom of contrition,
+remorse, or hesitation, with a calm, careless ferociousness of contented
+and satisfied depravity,--this was an insult which no man of genius had
+ever before dared to put upon his Creator or his species.  Impiously
+railing against his God, madly and meanly disloyal to his sovereign and
+his country, and brutally outraging all the best feelings of female
+honour, affection, and confidence, how small a part of chivalry is that
+which remains to the descendant of the Byrons!--a gloomy visor and a
+deadly weapon!
+
+'Those who are acquainted (and who is not?) with the main incidents in
+the private life of Lord Byron, and who have not seen this production,
+will scarcely believe that malignity should have carried him so far as to
+make him commence a filthy and impious poem with an elaborate satire on
+the character and manners of his wife, from whom, even by his own
+confession, he has been separated only in consequence of his own cruel
+and heartless misconduct.  It is in vain for Lord Byron to attempt in any
+way to justify his own behaviour in that affair; and, now that he has so
+openly and audaciously invited inquiry and reproach, we do not see any
+good reason why he should not be plainly told so by the general voice of
+his countrymen.  It would not be an easy matter to persuade any man who
+has any knowledge of the nature of woman, that a female such as Lord
+Byron has himself described his wife to be would rashly or hastily or
+lightly separate herself from the love with which she had once been
+inspired for such a man as he is or was.  Had he not heaped insult upon
+insult, and scorn upon scorn, had he not forced the iron of his contempt
+into her very soul, there is no woman of delicacy and virtue, as he
+admitted Lady Byron to be, who would not have hoped all things, and
+suffered all things, from one, her love of whom must have been inwoven
+with so many exalting elements of delicious pride, and more delicious
+humility.  To offend the love of such a woman was wrong, but it might be
+forgiven; to desert her was unmanly, but he might have returned, and
+wiped for ever from her eyes the tears of her desertion: but to injure
+and to desert, and then to turn back and wound her widowed privacy with
+unhallowed strains of cold-blooded mockery, was brutally, fiendishly,
+inexpiably mean.  For impurities there might be some possibility of
+pardon, were they supposed to spring only from the reckless buoyancy of
+young blood and fiery passions; for impiety there might at least be pity,
+were it visible that the misery of the impious soul equalled its
+darkness: but for offences such as this, which cannot proceed either from
+the madness of sudden impulse or the bewildered agonies of doubt, but
+which speak the wilful and determined spite of an unrepenting,
+unsoftened, smiling, sarcastic, joyous sinner, there can be neither pity
+nor pardon.  Our knowledge that it is committed by one of the most
+powerful intellects our island ever has produced lends intensity a
+thousand-fold to the bitterness of our indignation.  Every high thought
+that was ever kindled in our breasts by the Muse of Byron, every pure and
+lofty feeling that ever responded from within us to the sweep of his
+majestic inspirations, every remembered moment of admiration and
+enthusiasm, is up in arms against him.  We look back with a mixture of
+wrath and scorn to the delight with which we suffered ourselves to be
+filled by one, who, all the while he was furnishing us with delight,
+must, we cannot doubt it, have been mocking us with a cruel mockery; less
+cruel only, because less peculiar, than that with which he has now turned
+him from the lurking-place of his selfish and polluted exile to pour the
+pitiful chalice of his contumely on the surrendered devotion of a virgin
+bosom, and the holy hopes of the mother of his child.  It is indeed a sad
+and a humiliating thing to know, that in the same year, there proceeded
+from the same pen two productions in all things so different as the
+fourth canto of "Childe Harold" and his loathsome "Don Juan."
+
+'We have mentioned one, and, all will admit, the worst instance of the
+private malignity which has been embodied in so many passages of "Don
+Juan;" and we are quite sure the lofty-minded and virtuous men whom Lord
+Byron has debased himself by insulting will close the volume which
+contains their own injuries, with no feelings save those of pity for him
+that has inflicted them, and for her who partakes so largely in the same
+injuries.'--August, 1819.
+
+* * * * *
+
+'BLACKWOOD,'--iterum.
+
+'We shall, like all others who say anything about Lord Byron, begin, sans
+apologie, with his personal character.  This is the great object of
+attack, the constant theme of open vituperation to one set, and the
+established mark for all the petty but deadly artillery of sneers,
+shrugs, groans, to another.  Two widely different matters, however, are
+generally, we might say universally, mixed up here,--the personal
+character of the man, as proved by his course of life; and his personal
+character, as revealed in or guessed from his books.  Nothing can be more
+unfair than the style in which this mixture is made use of.  Is there a
+noble sentiment, a lofty thought, a sublime conception, in the book?  "Ah,
+yes!" is the answer.  "But what of that?  It is only the roue Byron that
+speaks!"  Is a kind, a generous action of the man mentioned?  "Yes, yes!"
+comments the sage; "but only remember the atrocities of 'Don Juan:'
+depend on it, this, if it be true, must have been a mere freak of
+caprice, or perhaps a bit of vile hypocrisy."  Salvation is thus shut out
+at either entrance: the poet damns the man, and the man the poet.
+
+'Nobody will suspect us of being so absurd as to suppose that it is
+possible for people to draw no inferences as to the character of an
+author from his book, or to shut entirely out of view, in judging of a
+book, that which they may happen to know about the man who writes it.  The
+cant of the day supposes such things to be practicable; but they are not.
+But what we complain of and scorn is the extent to which they are carried
+in the case of this particular individual, as compared with others; the
+impudence with which things are at once assumed to be facts in regard to
+his private history; and the absolute unfairness of never arguing from
+his writings to him, but for evil.
+
+'Take the man, in the first place, as unconnected, in so far as we can
+thus consider him, with his works; and ask, What, after all, are the bad
+things we know of him?  Was he dishonest or dishonourable? had he ever
+done anything to forfeit, or even endanger, his rank as a gentleman?  Most
+assuredly, no such accusations have ever been maintained against Lord
+Byron the private nobleman, although something of the sort may have been
+insinuated against the author.  "But he was such a profligate in his
+morals, that his name cannot be mentioned with anything like tolerance."
+Was he so, indeed?  We should like extremely to have the catechising of
+the individual man who says so.  That he indulged in sensual vices, to
+some extent, is certain, and to be regretted and condemned.  But was he
+worse, as to such matters, than the enormous majority of those who join
+in the cry of horror upon this occasion?  We most assuredly believe
+exactly the reverse; and we rest our belief upon very plain and
+intelligible grounds.  First, we hold it impossible that the majority of
+mankind, or that anything beyond a very small minority, are or can be
+entitled to talk of sensual profligacy as having formed a part of the
+life and character of the man, who, dying at six and thirty, bequeathed a
+collection of works such as Byron's to the world.  Secondly, we hold it
+impossible, that laying the extent of his intellectual labours out of the
+question, and looking only to the nature of the intellect which
+generated, and delighted in generating, such beautiful and noble
+conceptions as are to be found in almost all Lord Byron's works,--we hold
+it impossible that very many men can be at once capable of comprehending
+these conceptions, and entitled to consider sensual profligacy as having
+formed the principal, or even a principal, trait in Lord Byron's
+character.  Thirdly, and lastly, we have never been able to hear any one
+fact established which could prove Lord Byron to deserve anything like
+the degree or even kind of odium which has, in regard to matters of this
+class, been heaped upon his name.  We have no story of base unmanly
+seduction, or false and villainous intrigue, against him,--none whatever.
+It seems to us quite clear, that, if he had been at all what is called in
+society an unprincipled sensualist, there must have been many such
+stories, authentic and authenticated.  But there are none
+such,--absolutely none.  His name has been coupled with the names of
+three, four, or more women of some rank: but what kind of women?  Every
+one of them, in the first place, about as old as himself in years, and
+therefore a great deal older in character; every one of them utterly
+battered in reputation long before he came into contact with
+them,--licentious, unprincipled, characterless women.  What father has
+ever reproached him with the ruin of his daughter?  What husband has
+denounced him as the destroyer of his peace?
+
+'Let us not be mistaken.  We are not defending the offences of which Lord
+Byron unquestionably was guilty; neither are we finding fault with those,
+who, after looking honestly within and around themselves, condemn those
+offences, no matter how severely: but we are speaking of society in
+general as it now exists; and we say that there is vile hypocrisy in the
+tone in which Lord Byron is talked of there.  We say, that, although all
+offences against purity of life are miserable things, and condemnable
+things, the degrees of guilt attached to different offences of this class
+are as widely different as are the degrees of guilt between an assault
+and a murder; and we confess our belief, that no man of Byron's station
+or age could have run much risk in gaining a very bad name in society,
+had a course of life similar (in so far as we know any thing of that) to
+Lord Byron's been the only thing chargeable against him.
+
+'The last poem he wrote was produced upon his birthday, not many weeks
+before he died.  We consider it as one of the finest and most touching
+effusions of his noble genius.  We think he who reads it, and can ever
+after bring himself to regard even the worst transgressions that have
+been charged against Lord Byron with any feelings but those of humble
+sorrow and manly pity, is not deserving of the name of man.  The deep and
+passionate struggles with the inferior elements of his nature (and ours)
+which it records; the lofty thirsting after purity; the heroic devotion
+of a soul half weary of life, because unable to believe in its own powers
+to live up to what it so intensely felt to be, and so reverentially
+honoured as, the right; the whole picture of this mighty spirit, often
+darkened, but never sunk,--often erring, but never ceasing to see and to
+worship the beauty of virtue; the repentance of it; the anguish; the
+aspiration, almost stifled in despair,--the whole of this is such a
+whole, that we are sure no man can read these solemn verses too often;
+and we recommend them for repetition, as the best and most conclusive of
+all possible answers whenever the name of Byron is insulted by those who
+permit themselves to forget nothing, either in his life or in his
+writings, but the good.'--[1825.]
+
+
+
+LETTERS OF LADY BYRON TO H. C. ROBINSON
+
+
+The following letters of Lady Byron's are reprinted from the Memoirs of
+H. C. Robinson.  They are given that the reader may form some judgment of
+the strength and activity of her mind, and the elevated class of subjects
+upon which it habitually dwelt.
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+                                       'DEC. 31, 1853.
+
+'DEAR MR. CRABB ROBINSON,--I have an inclination, if I were not afraid of
+trespassing on your time (but you can put my letter by for any leisure
+moment), to enter upon the history of a character which I think less
+appreciated than it ought to be.  Men, I observe, do not understand men
+in certain points, without a woman's interpretation.  Those points, of
+course, relate to feelings.
+
+'Here is a man taken by most of those who come in his way either for Dry-
+as-Dust, Matter-of-fact, or for a "vain visionary."  There are,
+doubtless, some defective or excessive characteristics which give rise to
+those impressions.
+
+'My acquaintance was made, oddly enough, with him twenty-seven years ago.
+A pauper said to me of him, "He's the poor man's doctor."  Such a
+recommendation seemed to me a good one: and I also knew that his
+organizing head had formed the first district society in England (for
+Mrs. Fry told me she could not have effected it without his aid); yet he
+has always ignored his own share of it.  I felt in him at once the
+curious combination of the Christian and the cynic,--of reverence for
+man, and contempt of men.  It was then an internal war, but one in which
+it was evident to me that the holier cause would be victorious, because
+there was deep belief, and, as far as I could learn, a blameless and
+benevolent life.  He appeared only to want sunshine.  It was a plant
+which could not be brought to perfection in darkness.  He had begun life
+by the most painful conflict between filial duty and conscience,--a large
+provision in the church secured for him by his father; but he could not
+sign.  There was discredit, as you know, attached to such scruples.
+
+'He was also, when I first knew him, under other circumstances of a
+nature to depress him, and to make him feel that he was unjustly treated.
+The gradual removal of these called forth his better nature in
+thankfulness to God.  Still the old misanthropic modes of expressing
+himself obtruded themselves at times.  This passed in '48 between him and
+Robertson.  Robertson said to me, "I want to know something about ragged
+schools."  I replied, "You had better ask Dr. King: he knows more about
+them."--"I?" said Dr. King.  "I take care to know nothing of ragged
+schools, lest they should make me ragged."  Robertson did not see through
+it.  Perhaps I had been taught to understand such suicidal speeches by my
+cousin, Lord Melbourne.
+
+'The example of Christ, imperfectly as it may be understood by him, has
+been ever before his eyes: he woke to the thought of following it, and he
+went to rest consoled or rebuked by it.  After nearly thirty years of
+intimacy, I may, without presumption, form that opinion.  There is
+something pathetic to me in seeing any one so unknown.  Even the other
+medical friends of Robertson, when I knew that Dr. King felt a woman's
+tenderness, said on one occasion to him, "But we know that you, Dr. King,
+are above all feeling."
+
+'If I have made the character more consistent to you by putting in these
+bits of mosaic, my pen will not have been ill employed, nor unpleasingly
+to you.
+
+                                   'Yours truly,
+
+                                       'A. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+                                'BRIGHTON, NOV. 15,1854.
+
+'The thoughts of all this public and private suffering have taken the
+life out of my pen when I tried to write on matters which would otherwise
+have been most interesting to me: these seemed the shadows, that the
+stern reality.  It is good, however, to be drawn out of scenes in which
+one is absorbed most unprofitably, and to have one's natural interests
+revived by such a letter as I have to thank you for, as well as its
+predecessor.  You touch upon the very points which do interest me the
+most, habitually.  The change of form, and enlargement of design, in "The
+Prospective" had led me to express to one of the promoters of that object
+my desire to contribute.  The religious crisis is instant; but the man
+for it?  The next best thing, if, as I believe, he is not to be found in
+England, is an association of such men as are to edit the new periodical.
+An address delivered by Freeman Clarke at Boston, last May, makes me
+think him better fitted for a leader than any other of the religious
+"Free-thinkers."  I wish I could send you my one copy; but you do not
+need, it, and others do.  His object is the same as that of the "Alliance
+Universelle:" only he is still more free from "partialism" (his own word)
+in his aspirations and practical suggestions with respect to an ultimate
+"Christian synthesis."  He so far adopts Comte's theory as to speak of
+religion itself under three successive aspects, historically,--1.  Thesis;
+2. Antithesis;  3. Synthesis.  I made his acquaintance in England; and he
+inspired confidence at once by his brave independence (incomptis
+capillis) and self-unconsciousness.  J. J. Tayler's address of last month
+follows in the same path,--all in favour of the "irenics," instead of
+polemics.
+
+'The answer which you gave me so fully and distinctly to the questions I
+proposed for your consideration was of value in turning to my view
+certain aspects of the case which I had not before observed.  I had begun
+a second attack on your patience, when all was forgotten in the news of
+the day.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+                                'BRIGHTON, Dec. 25, 1854.
+
+'With J. J. Tayler, though almost a stranger to him, I have a peculiar
+reason for sympathising.  A book of his was a treasure to my daughter on
+her death-bed. {320a}
+
+'I must confess to intolerance of opinion as to these two points,--eternal
+evil in any form, and (involved in it) eternal suffering.  To believe in
+these would take away my God, who is all-loving.  With a God with whom
+omnipotence and omniscience were all, evil might be eternal; but why do I
+say to you what has been better said elsewhere?'
+
+* * * * *
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+                               'BRIGHTON, Jan. 31, 1855.
+
+. . .  'The great difficulty in respect to "The Review" {320b} seems to
+be to settle a basis, inclusive and exclusive; in short, a boundary
+question.  From what you said, I think you agreed with me, that a
+latitudinarian Christianity ought to be the character of the periodical;
+but the depth of the roots should correspond with the width of the
+branches of that tree of knowledge.  Of some of those minds one might
+say, "They have no root;" and then, the richer the foliage, the more
+danger that the trunk will fall.  "Grounded in Christ" has to me a most
+practical significance and value.  I, too, have anxiety about a friend
+(Miss Carpenter) whose life is of public importance: she, more than any
+of the English reformers, unless Nash and Wright, has found the art of
+drawing out the good of human nature, and proving its existence.  She
+makes these discoveries by the light of love.  I hope she may recover,
+from to-day's report.  The object of a Reformatory in Leicester has just
+been secured at a county meeting . . . .  Now the desideratum is well-
+qualified masters and mistresses.  If you hear of such by chance, pray
+let me know.  The regular schoolmaster is an extinguisher.  Heart, and
+familiarity with the class to be educated, are all important.  At home
+and abroad, the evidence is conclusive on that point; for I have for many
+years attended to such experiments in various parts of Europe.  "The
+Irish Quarterly" has taken up the subject with rather more zeal than
+judgment.  I had hoped that a sound and temperate exposition of the facts
+might form an article in the "Might-have-been Review."'
+
+* * * * *
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+                               'BRIGHTON, Feb. 12, 1855.
+
+'I have at last earned the pleasure of writing to you by having settled
+troublesome matters of little moment, except locally; and I gladly take a
+wider range by sympathizing in your interests.  There is, besides, no
+responsibility--for me at least--in canvassing the merits of Russell or
+Palmerston, but much in deciding whether the "village politician" Jackson
+or Thompson shall be leader in the school or public-house.
+
+'Has not the nation been brought to a conviction that the system should
+be broken up? and is Lord Palmerston, who has used it so long and so
+cleverly, likely to promote that object?
+
+'But, whatever obstacles there may be in state affairs, that general
+persuasion must modify other departments of action and knowledge.
+"Unroasted coffee" will no longer be accepted under the official
+seal,--another reason for a new literary combination for distinct special
+objects, a review in which every separate article should be convergent.
+If, instead of the problem to make a circle pass through three given
+points, it were required to find the centre from which to describe a
+circle through any three articles in the "Edinburgh" or "Westminster
+Review," who would accomplish it?  Much force is lost for want of this
+one-mindedness amongst the contributors.  It would not exclude variety or
+freedom in the unlimited discussion of means towards the ends
+unequivocally recognized.  If St. Paul had edited a review, he might
+
+have admitted Peter as well as Luke or Barnabas . . . .
+
+'Ross gave us an excellent sermon, yesterday, on "Hallowing the Name."
+Though far from commonplace, it might have been delivered in any church.
+
+'We have had Fanny Kemble here last week.  I only heard her "Romeo and
+Juliet,"--not less instructive, as her readings always are, than
+exciting; for in her glass Shakspeare is a philosopher.  I know her, and
+honour her, for her truthfulness amidst all trials.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+                                'BRIGHTON, March 5, 1855.
+
+'I recollect only those passages of Dr. Kennedy's book which bear upon
+the opinions of Lord Byron.  Strange as it may seem, Dr. Kennedy is most
+faithful where you doubt his being so.  Not merely from casual
+expressions, but from the whole tenor of Lord Byron's feelings, I could
+not but conclude he was a believer in the inspiration of the Bible, and
+had the gloomiest Calvinistic tenets.  To that unhappy view of the
+relation of the creature to the Creator, I have always ascribed the
+misery of his life . . . .  It is enough for me to remember, that he who
+thinks his transgressions beyond forgiveness (and such was his own
+deepest feeling) has righteousness beyond that of the self-satisfied
+sinner, or, perhaps, of the half-awakened.  It was impossible for me to
+doubt, that, could he have been at once assured of pardon, his living
+faith in a moral duty, and love of virtue ("I love the virtues which I
+cannot claim"), would have conquered every temptation.  Judge, then, how
+I must hate the creed which made him see God as an Avenger, not a Father!
+My own impressions were just the reverse, but could have little weight;
+and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts for long from that idee
+fixe with which he connected his physical peculiarity as a stamp.  Instead
+of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt convinced that every
+blessing would be "turned into a curse" to him.  Who, possessed by such
+ideas, could lead a life of love and service to God or man?  They must,
+in a measure, realize themselves.  "The worst of it is, I do believe," he
+said.  I, like all connected with him, was broken against the rock of
+predestination.  I may be pardoned for referring to his frequent
+expression of the sentiment that I was only sent to show him the
+happiness he was forbidden to enjoy.  You will now better understand why
+"The Deformed Transformed" is too painful to me for discussion.  Since
+writing the above, I have read Dr. Granville's letter on the Emperor of
+Russia, some passages of which seem applicable to the prepossession I
+have described.  I will not mix up less serious matters with these, which
+forty years have not made less than present still to me.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+                                'BRIGHTON, April 8, 1855.
+
+. . . . 'The book which has interested me most, lately, is that on
+"Mosaism," translated by Miss Goldsmid, and which I read, as you will
+believe, without any Christian (unchristian?) prejudice.  The
+missionaries of the Unity were always, from my childhood, regarded by me
+as in that sense the people; and I believe they were true to that
+mission, though blind, intellectually, in demanding the crucifixion.  The
+present aspect of Jewish opinions, as shown in that book, is all but
+Christian.  The author is under the error of taking, as the
+representatives of Christianity, the Mystics, Ascetics, and Quietists;
+and therefore he does not know how near he is to the true spirit of the
+gospel.  If you should happen to see Miss Goldsmid, pray tell her what a
+great service I think she has rendered to us soi-disant Christians in
+translating a book which must make us sensible of the little we have
+done, and the much we have to do, to justify our preference of the later
+to the earlier dispensation.' . . .
+
+* * * * *
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+                               BRIGHTON, April 11, 1855.
+
+'You appear to have more definite information respecting "The Review"
+than I have obtained . . .  It was also said that "The Review" would, in
+fact, be "The Prospective" amplified,--not satisfactory to me, because I
+have always thought that periodical too Unitarian, in the sense of
+separating itself from other Christian churches, if not by a high wall,
+at least by a wire-gauze fence.  Now, separation is to me the [Greek
+text].  The revelation through Nature never separates: it is the
+revelation through the Book which separates.  Whewell and Brewster would
+have been one, had they not, I think, equally dimmed their lamps of
+science when reading their Bibles.  As long as we think a truth better
+for being shut up in a text, we are not of the wide-world religion, which
+is to include all in one fold: for that text will not be accepted by the
+followers of other books, or students of the same; and separation will
+ensue.  The Christian Scripture should be dear to us, not as the charter
+of a few, but of mankind; and to fashion it into cages is to deny its
+ultimate objects.  These thoughts hot, like the roll at breakfast, where
+your letter was so welcome an addition.'
+
+
+
+THREE DOMESTIC POEMS BY LORD BYRON.
+
+
+FARE THEE WELL.
+
+   Fare thee well! and if for ever,
+   Still for ever fare thee well!
+   Even though unforgiving, never
+   'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
+
+   Would that breast were bared before thee
+   Where thy head so oft hath lain,
+   While that placid sleep came o'er thee
+   Which thou ne'er canst know again!
+
+   Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
+   Every inmost thought could show!
+   Then thou wouldst at last discover
+   'Twas not well to spurn it so.
+
+   Though the world for this commend thee,
+   Though it smile upon the blow,
+   Even its praises must offend thee,
+   Founded on another's woe.
+
+   Though my many faults defaced me,
+   Could no other arm be found,
+   Than the one which once embraced me,
+   To inflict a cureless wound?
+
+   Yet, oh! yet, thyself deceive not:
+   Love may sink by slow decay;
+   But, by sudden wrench, believe not
+   Hearts can thus be torn away:
+
+   Still thine own its life retaineth;
+   Still must mine, though bleeding, beat
+   And the undying thought which paineth
+   Is--that we no more may meet.
+
+   These are words of deeper sorrow
+   Than the wail above the dead:
+   Both shall live, but every morrow
+   Wake us from a widowed bed.
+
+   And when thou wouldst solace gather,
+   When our child's first accents flow,
+   Wilt thou teach her to say 'Father,'
+   Though his care she must forego?
+
+   When her little hand shall press thee,
+   When her lip to thine is pressed,
+   Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee;
+   Think of him thy love had blessed.
+
+   Should her lineaments resemble
+   Those thou never more mayst see,
+   Then thy heart will softly tremble
+   With a pulse yet true to me.
+
+   All my faults, perchance, thou knowest;
+   All my madness none can know:
+   All my hopes, where'er thou goest,
+   Wither; yet with thee they go.
+
+   Every feeling hath been shaken:
+   Pride, which not a world could bow,
+   Bows to thee, by thee forsaken;
+   Even my soul forsakes me now.
+
+   But 'tis done: all words are idle;
+   Words from me are vainer still;
+   But the thoughts we cannot bridle
+   Force their way without the will.
+
+   Fare thee well!--thus disunited,
+   Torn from every nearer tie,
+   Seared in heart, and lone and blighted,
+   More than this I scarce can die.
+
+A SKETCH.
+
+   Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred;
+   Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;
+   Next--for some gracious service unexpress'd,
+   And from its wages only to be guessed--
+   Raised from the toilette to the table, where
+   Her wondering betters wait behind her chair,
+   With eye unmoved, and forehead unabashed,
+   She dines from off the plate she lately washed.
+   Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,
+   The genial confidante and general spy,
+   Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess?--
+   An only infant's earliest governess!
+   She taught the child to read, and taught so well,
+   That she herself, by teaching, learned to spell.
+   An adept next in penmanship she grows,
+   As many a nameless slander deftly shows:
+   What she had made the pupil of her art,
+   None know; but that high soul secured the heart,
+   And panted for the truth it could not hear,
+   With longing breast and undeluded ear.
+   Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,
+   Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
+   Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,
+   Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,
+   Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
+   On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
+   Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
+   Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,
+   Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,
+   Nor virtue teach austerity, till now.
+   Serenely purest of her sex that live;
+   But wanting one sweet weakness,--to forgive;
+   Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,
+   She deems that all could be like her below:
+   Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend;
+   For Virtue pardons those she would amend.
+
+   But to the theme, now laid aside too long,--
+   The baleful burthen of this honest song.
+   Though all her former functions are no more,
+   She rules the circle which she served before.
+   If mothers--none know why--before her quake;
+   If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;
+   If early habits--those false links, which bind
+   At times the loftiest to the meanest mind--
+   Have given her power too deeply to instil
+   The angry essence of her deadly will;
+   If like a snake she steal within your walls
+   Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
+   If like a viper to the heart she wind,
+   And leave the venom there she did not find,
+   What marvel that this hag of hatred works
+   Eternal evil latent as she lurks,
+   To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,
+   And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?
+   Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
+   With all the kind mendacity of hints,
+   While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,
+   A thread of candour with a web of wiles;
+   A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,
+   To hide her bloodless heart's soul-hardened scheming;
+   A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,
+   And, without feeling, mock at all who feel;
+   With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown;
+   A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.
+   Mark how the channels of her yellow blood
+   Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud!
+   Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
+   Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,
+   (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
+   Congenial colours in that soul or face,)--
+   Look on her features! and behold her mind
+   As in a mirror of itself defined.
+   Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged;
+   There is no trait which might not be enlarged:
+   Yet true to 'Nature's journeymen,' who made
+   This monster when their mistress left off trade,
+   This female dog-star of her little sky,
+   Where all beneath her influence droop or die.
+
+   O wretch without a tear, without a thought,
+   Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought!
+   The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou
+   Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now,--
+   Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
+   And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
+   May the strong curse of crushed affections light
+   Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,
+   And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind,
+   As loathsome to thyself as to mankind,
+   Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate
+   Black as thy will for others would create:
+   Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
+   And thy soul welter in its hideous crust!
+   Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
+   The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread!
+   Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
+   Look on thine earthly victims, and despair!
+   Down to the dust! and, as thou rott'st away,
+   Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
+   But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
+   To her thy malice from all ties would tear,
+   Thy name, thy human name, to every eye
+   The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,
+   Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers,
+   And festering in the infamy of years.
+
+
+
+LINES ON HEARING THAT LADY BYRON WAS ILL.
+
+   And thou wert sad, yet I was not with thee!
+      And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near!
+   Methought that joy and health alone could be
+   Where I was not, and pain and sorrow here.
+   And is it thus?  It is as I foretold,
+   And shall be more so; for the mind recoils
+   Upon itself, and the wrecked heart lies cold,
+   While heaviness collects the shattered spoils.
+   It is not in the storm nor in the strife
+   We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,
+   But in the after-silence on the shore,
+   When all is lost except a little life.
+   I am too well avenged!  But 'twas my right:
+   Whate'er my sins might be, thou wert not sent
+   To be the Nemesis who should requite;
+   Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
+   Mercy is for the merciful!--if thou
+   Hast been of such, 'twill be accorded now.
+   Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep!
+   Yes! they may flatter thee; but thou shalt feel
+   A hollow agony which will not heal;
+   For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep:
+   Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap
+   The bitter harvest in a woe as real!
+   I have had many foes, but none like thee;
+   For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,
+   And be avenged, or turn them into friend;
+   But thou in safe implacability
+   Hadst nought to dread, in thy own weakness shielded;
+   And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
+   And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.
+   And thus upon the world,--trust in thy truth,
+   And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,
+   On things that were not and on things that are,--
+   Even upon such a basis hast thou built
+   A monument, whose cement hath been guilt;
+   The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,
+   And hewed down, with an unsuspected sword,
+   Fame, peace, and hope, and all the better life,
+   Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
+   Might still have risen from out the grave of strife,
+   And found a nobler duty than to part.
+   But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,
+   Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,
+   For present anger and for future gold,
+   And buying others' grief at any price.
+   And thus, once entered into crooked ways,
+   The early truth, which was thy proper praise,
+   Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,
+   And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
+   Deceit, averments incompatible,
+   Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell
+   In Janus-spirits; the significant eye
+   Which learns to lie with silence; the pretext
+   Of prudence, with advantages annexed;
+   The acquiescence in all things which tend,
+   No matter how, to the desired end,--
+   All found a place in thy philosophy.
+   The means were worthy, and the end is won:
+   I would not do by thee as thou hast done!
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES.
+
+
+{7}  The italics are mine.
+
+{14}  The italics are mine.
+
+{16} In Lady Blessington's 'Memoirs' this name is given Charlemont; in
+the late 'Temple Bar' article on the character of Lady Byron it is given
+Clermont.  I have followed the latter.
+
+{17}  The italics are mine.
+
+{21} In Lady Blessington's conversations with Lord Byron, just before he
+went to Greece, she records that he gave her this poem in manuscript.  It
+was published in her 'Journal.'
+
+{22a} Vol. vi. p.22.
+
+{22b} 'Byron's Miscellany,' vol. ii. p.358.  London, 1853.
+
+{23}  The italics are mine.
+
+{24} Lord Byron says, in his observations on an article in 'Blackwood:'
+'I recollect being much hurt by Romilly's conduct: he (having a general
+retainer for me) went over to the adversary, alleging, on being reminded
+of his retainer, that he had forgotten it, as his clerk had so many.  I
+observed that some of those who were now so eagerly laying the axe to my
+roof-tree might see their own shaken.  His fell and crushed him.'
+
+In the first edition of Moore's Life of Lord Byron there was printed a
+letter on Sir Samuel Romilly, so brutal that it was suppressed in the
+subsequent editions.  (See Part III.)
+
+{28a} Vol. iv. p.40
+
+{28b} Ibid. p.46.
+
+{31}  The italics are mine.
+
+{41} Vol. iv. p.143.
+
+{43} Lord Byron took especial pains to point out to Murray the importance
+of these two letters.  Vol. V. Letter 443, he says: 'You must also have
+from Mr. Moore the correspondence between me and Lady B., to whom I
+offered a sight of all that concerns herself in these papers.  This is
+important.  He has her letter and my answer.'
+
+{44} 'And I, who with them on the cross am placed,
+    .          .          .          .    truly
+    My savage wife, more than aught else, doth harm me.'
+                        Inferno, Canto, XVI., Longfellow's translation.
+
+{49} 'Conversations,' p.108.
+
+{51} Murray's edition of 'Byron's Works,' vol. ii. p.189; date of
+dedication to Hobhouse, Jan. 2, 1818.
+
+{61} Recently, Lord Lindsay has published another version of this story,
+which makes it appear that he has conversed with a lady who conversed
+with Hobhouse during his lifetime, in which this story is differently
+reported.  In the last version, it is made to appear that Hobhouse got
+this declaration from Lady Byron herself.
+
+{70a} The references are to the first volume of the first edition of
+Moore's 'Life,' originally published by itself.
+
+{70b} 'The officious spies of his privacy,' p.65O.
+
+{72} 'The deserted husband,' p.651.
+
+{86} 'I (Campbell) had not time to ask Lady Byron's permission to print
+this private letter; but it seemed to me important, and I have published
+it meo periculo.'
+
+{95a} 'Noctes,' July 1822.
+
+{95b} 'Noctes,' September 1832.
+
+{105} Miss Martineau's Biographical Sketches.
+
+{113}  The italics are mine.--H. B. S.
+
+{119} In 'The Noctes' of November, 1824 Christopher North says, 'I don't
+call Medwin a liar. . . .  Whether Byron bammed him, or he, by virtue of
+his own stupidity, was the sole and sufficient bammifier of himself, I
+know not.'  A note says that Murray had been much shocked by Byron's
+misstatements to Medwin as to money-matters with him.  The note goes on
+to say, 'Medwin could not have invented them, for they were mixed up with
+acknowledged facts; and the presumption is that Byron mystified his
+gallant acquaintance.  He was fond of such tricks.'
+
+{121} This one fact is, that Lord Byron might have had an open
+examination in court, if he had only persisted in refusing the deed of
+separation.
+
+{126} In the history of 'Blackwood's Magazine,' prefaced to the American
+edition of 1854, Mackenzie says of the 'Noctes' papers, 'Great as was
+their popularity in England it was peculiarly in America that their high
+merit and undoubted originality received the heartiest recognition and
+appreciation.  Nor is this wonderful when it is considered that for one
+reader of "Blackwood's Magazine" in the old country there cannot be less
+than fifty in the new.'
+
+{139} The reader is here referred to Lady Byron's other letters, in Part
+III.; which also show the peculiarly active and philosophical character
+of her mind, and the class of subjects on which it habitually dwelt.
+
+{147} See her character of Dr. King, Part III.
+
+{148} Alluding to the financial crisis in the United States in 1857.
+
+{149} 'The Minister's Wooing.'
+
+{150} See her letter on spiritualistic phenomena, Part III.
+
+{161} This novel of Godwin's is a remarkably powerful story.  It is
+related in the first person by the supposed hero, Caleb Williams.  He
+represents himself as private secretary to a gentleman of high family
+named Falkland.  Caleb accidentally discovers that his patron has, in a
+moment of passion, committed a murder.  Falkland confesses the crime to
+Caleb, and tells him that henceforth he shall always suspect him, and
+keep watch over him.  Caleb finds this watchfulness insupportable, and
+tries to escape, but without success.  He writes a touching letter to his
+patron, imploring him to let him go, and promising never to betray him.
+The scene where Falkland refuses this is the most highly wrought in the
+book.  He says to him, "Do not imagine that I am afraid of you; I wear an
+armour against which all your weapons are impotent.  I have dug a pit for
+you: and whichever way you move, backward or forward, to the right or the
+left, it is ready to swallow you.  Be still!  If once you fall, call as
+loud as you will, no man on earth shall hear your cries: prepare a tale
+however plausible or however true, the whole world shall execrate you for
+an impostor.  Your innocence shall be of no service to you.  I laugh at
+so feeble a defence.  It is I that say it: you may believe what I tell
+you.  Do you know, miserable wretch!" added he, stamping on the ground
+with fury, "that I have sworn to preserve my reputation, whatever be the
+expense; that I love it more than the whole world and its inhabitants
+taken together? and do you think that you shall wound it?"  The rest of
+the book shows how this threat was executed.
+
+{168} Alluding to Buchanan's election.
+
+{178a} Shelton Mackenzie, in a note to the 'Noctes' of July 1822, gives
+the following saying of Maginn, one of the principal lights of the club:
+'No man, however much he might tend to civilisation, was to be regarded
+as having absolutely reached its apex until he was drunk.'  He also
+records it as a further joke of the club, that a man's having reached
+this apex was to be tested by his inability to pronounce the word
+'civilisation,' which, he says, after ten o'clock at night ought to be
+abridged to civilation, 'by syncope, or vigorously speaking by hic-cup.'
+
+{178b} Vol. v. pp.61, 75.
+
+{181}  These italics are ours.
+
+{190a} This little incident shows the characteristic carefulness and
+accuracy of Lady Byron's habits.  This statement was written fourteen
+years after the events spoken of; but Lady Byron carefully quotes a
+passage from her mother's letter written at that time.  This shows that a
+copy of Lady Milbanke's letter had been preserved, and makes it appear
+probable that copies of the whole correspondence of that period were also
+kept.  Great light could be thrown on the whole transaction, could these
+documents be consulted.
+
+{190b} Here, again, Lady Byron's sealed papers might furnish light.  The
+letters addressed to her at this time by those in constant intercourse
+with Lord Byron are doubtless preserved, and would show her ground of
+action.
+
+{192} Probably Lady Milbanke's letters are among the sealed papers, and
+would more fully explain the situation.
+
+{205a} Hunt's Byron, p.77. Philadelphia, 1828.
+
+{205b} From the Temple Bar article, October 1869.  'Mrs. Leigh, Lord
+Byron's sister, had other thoughts of Mrs. Clermont, and wrote to her
+offering public testimony to her tenderness and forbearance under
+circumstances which must have been trying to any friend of Lady
+Byron.'--Campbell, in the New Monthly Magazine, 183O, p.38O.
+
+{219} 'My Recollections,' p.238.
+
+{225} Vol. vi.  p.242.
+
+{227} The reader is here referred to the remarks of 'Blackwood' on 'Don
+Juan' in Part III.
+
+{258} The article in question is worth a careful reading.  Its industry
+and accuracy in amassing evidence are worthy attention.
+
+{320a} Probably 'The Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty.'  Mr. Tayler
+has also written 'A Retrospect of the Religious Life of England.'
+
+{320b} 'The National Review.'
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY BYRON VINDICATED***
+
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