judge between man and wife. Theirs is a relation
about which nobody but themselves can form a
correct idea, or have any right to speak. As long
as neither party commits gross injustice towards
the other; as long as neither the woman nor the
man is guilty of any offence which is injurious to
the community; as long as the husband provides
for his offspring, and secures the public against
the dangers arising from their neglected educa-
tion, or from the charge of supporting them; by
what right does it censure him for ceasing to
dwell under the same roof with a woman, who
is to him, because he knows her, while others do
not, an object of loathing? Can any thing be
more monstrous than for the public voice to com-
pel individuals who dislike each other to con-
tinue their cohabitation? This is at least the
effect of its interfering with a relationship, of
which it has no possible means of judging. It
does not indeed drag a man. to a woman's bed
by physical force, but it does exert a moral force
continually and effectively to accomplish the
same purpose.
Nobody can escape this force but
those who are too high, or those who are too low,
for public opinion to reach; or those hypocrites
who are, before others, the loudest in their ap-
probation of the empty and unmeaning forms of
society, that they may securely indulge all their
propensities in secret. I have suffered amazingly
from this interference; for though I set it at de-
fiance, I was neither too high nor too low to be
reached by it, and I was not hypocrite enough
to guard myself from its consequences.

"

dictated by my own feelings, and Lady Byron was quite the creature of rules. She was not permitted either to ride, or run, or walk, but as the physician prescribed. She was not suffered to go out when I wished to go: and then the old house was a mere ghost-house; I dreamed of ghosts, and thought of them waking. It was an existence I could not support." Here Lord Byron [broke off abruptly, saying, « I hate to speak of my family affairs; though I have been compelled to talk nonsense concerning them to some of my butterfly visitors, glad on any terms to get rid of their importunities. I long to be again on the mountains.

I am fond of solitude, and should never talk nonsense if I always found plain men to talk to. »

In the spring of 1816, Lord Byron quitted England, to return to it no more. He crossed over to France, through which he passed rapidly to Brussels, taking in his way a survey of the field of Waterloo. He then proceeded to Coblentz, and up the Rhine to Basle. He passed the summer on the banks of the lake of Geneva. With what enthusiasm he enjoyed its scenery, his own poetry soon exhibited to the world. The third canto of Childe Harold, Manfred, and the Prisoner of Chillon were composed at the Campagno Diodati, at Coligny, a mile from Geneva.

The anecdotes that follow are given as his lordship related them to Captain Medwin:

Switzerland is a country I have been satisfied with seeing once; Turkey I could live in for ever. I never forget my predilections. I was in a wretched state of health, and worse spirits, when I was at Geneva; but quiet and the lake, physicians better than Polidori, soon set me up. I never led so moral a life as during my residence

Where there is a mortification, there ought to be reward. On the contrary, there is no story so absurd that they did not invent at my cost. I was watched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses too that must have had very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my evening drives-I was accused of corrupting all the grisettes in the rue Basse. I believe that they looked upon me as a man-monster worse than the piqueur.»

What do they say of my family affairs in England, Parry? My story, I suppose, like other minor events, interested the people for a day, and was then forgotten?» I replied, no; I thought, owing to the very great interest the pub-in that country; but I gained no credit by it. lic took in him, it was still remembered and talked about. I mentioned that it was generally supposed a difference of religious sentiments between him and Lady Byron had caused the public breach. No, Parry, was the reply; « Lady Byron has a liberal mind, particularly as to religious opinions; and I wish, when I married her, that I had possessed the same command over myself that I now do. Had I possessed a little more wisdom, and more forbearance, we might have been happy. I wished, when I was first married, I knew very few of the Genevese. Hentsh to have remained in the country, particularly till was very civil to me; and I have a great respect my pecuniary embarrassments were over. I knew for Sismondi. I was forced to return the civilithe society of London; I knew the characters of ties of one of their professors by asking him, and many of those who are called ladies, with whom an old gentleman, a friend of Gray's, to dine Lady Byron would necessarily have to associate, with me. I had gone out to sail early in the and I dreaded her contact with them. But I have morning, and the wind prevented me from retoo much of my mother about me to be dictated turning in time for dinner. I understand that I to: I like freedom from constraint; I hate arti-offended them mortally. Polidori did the hoficial regulations: my conduct has always been nours.

. Among our countrymen I made no new ac- Manfred was the first of Lord Byron's dramatic quaintances; Shelley, Monk Lewis, and Hob-poems, and, is perhaps the finest. The melanhouse were almost the only English people I saw. No wonder ; I showed a distaste for society at that time, and went little among the Genevese; besides, I could not speak French. What is become of my boatman and boat? I suppose she is rotten; she was never worth much. When I went the tour of the lake in her with Shelley and Hobhouse, she was nearly wrecked near the very spot where Saint-Preux and Julia were in danger of being drowned. It would have been classical to have been lost there, but not so agreeable. Shelley was on the lake much oftener than 1, at all hours of the night and day: he almost lived on it; his great rage is a boat. We are both building now at Genoa, I a yacht, and he an open boat..

Somebody possessed Madame de Stael with an opinion of my immorality. I used occasionally to visit her at Coppet; and once she invited me to a family-dinner, and I found the room full of strangers, who had come to stare at me as at some outlandish beast in a raree-show. One of the ladies fainted, and the rest looked as if his satanic majesty had been among them. Madame de Stael took the liberty to read me a lecture before this crowd, to which I only made her a low bow..

His lordship's travelling equipage was rather a singular one, and afforded a strange catalogue for the Dogana: seven servants, five carriages, nine horses, a monkey, a bull-dog and mastiff, two cats, three pea-fowls and some hens (I do not know whether I have classed them in order of rank), formed part of his live stock; these, and all his books, consisting of a very large library of modern works (for he bought all the best that came out), together with a vast quantity of furnitare, might well be termed, with Cæsar, 'impediments.'»

From the commencement of the year 1817 to that of 1820, Lord Byron's principal residence was Venice where he continued to employ himself in poetical composition with an energy still increasing. He wrote there the Lament of Tasso, the fourth canto of Childe Harold, the dramas of Marino Faliero, and the Two Foscari; Beppo, Mazeppa, and the earlier cantos of Don Juan.

choly is more heartfelt, and the stern haughtiness of the principal character is altogether of an intellectual cast: the conception of this character is Miltonic. The poet has made him worthy to abide amongst those palaces of nature, those «icy halls, where forms and falls the avalauche. Manfred stands up against the stupendous scenery of the poem, and is as lofty, towering, and grand as the mountains: when we picture him in imagination he assumes a shape of height and independent dignity, shining in its own splendour amongst the snowy summits which he was accustomed to climb. The passion, in this composition, is fervid and impetuous, deep and full throughout, while the music of the language is solemn and touching. The first idea of the descriptive passages of this beautiful poem will be easily recognised in the following extract from Lord Byron's travelling memorandum-book.

Sept. 22, 1816. Left Thun in a boat, which carried us the length of this lake in three hours. The lake small, but the banks fine-rocks down to the water's edge-landed at Newhouse. Passed Interlachen-entered upon a range of scenes beyond all description or previous conception. Passed a rock bearing an inscription-two brothers-one murdered the other-just the place for it. After a variety of windings came to an enormous rock-arrived at the foot of the mountain (the Jungfraw)-glaciers-torrents-one of these 900 feet visible descent—lodge at the curate's-set out to see the valley-heard an avalanche fall, like thunder!-glaciers enormousstorm comes on-thunder and lightning, and hail! all in perfection and beautiful. The torrent is in shape, curving over the rock, like the tail of the white horse streaming in the windjust as might be couceived would be that of the 'Pale Horse,' on which Death is mounted in the Apocalypse. It is neither mist nor water, but a something between both; its immense height gives it a wave, a curve, a spreading here, a condension there-wonderful-indescribable.

It was

Sept 23. Ascent of the Wingren, the Dent d'argent shining like truth on one side, on the other the clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices, like the foam Considering these only with regard to intel- of the ocean of hell during a spring tide! lectual activity and force, there can be no diffe-white and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in rence of opinion; though there may be as to their appearance. The side we ascended was of course degree of poetical excellence, the class in the not of so precipitous a nature, but on arriving scale of literary merit to which they belong, and at the summit we looked down on the other side their moral, religious, and political tendencies. upon a boiling sea of cloud, dashing against the The Lament of Tasso, which abounds in the most crag on which we stood. Arrived at the Greenperfect poetry, is liable to no countervailing ob- derwold; mounted and rode to the higher glajection on the part of the moralist. cier-twilight, but distinct-very fine-glacier

like a frozen hurricane-starlight beautiful-the whole of the day was fine, and, in point of weather, as the day in which Paradise was made. Passed whole woods of withered pines-all withered-trunks stripped and lifeless-done by a single winter.»

do not recollect to have exchanged a word with another Englishman since I left their country, and almost all these I had known before. The others, and God knows there were some hundreds, who bored me with letters or visits, I refused to have any communication with; and shall be proud and happy when that wish becomes mutual. »

After a residence of three years at Venice, Lord Byron removed to Ravenna, towards the

Of lord Byron's tragedies we shall merely remark, with reference to the particular nature of their tragic character, that their effect is rather grand, terrible, and terrific, than mollifying, sub-close of the year 1819. Here he wrote the Produing, or pathetic. As dramatic poems they possess much beauty and originality.

phecy of Dante, which exhibited a new specimen of the astonishing variety of strength and exThe style and nature of the poem of Don Juan pansion of faculties he possessed and exercised. forms a singularly felicitous mixture of burlesque About the same time he wrote Sardanapalus, a and pathos, of humorous observation and the tragedy; Cain, a mystery; and Heaven and Earth, higher elements of poetical composition. Never a mystery. Though there are some obvious reawas the English language festooned into more sons which render Sardanapalus unfit for the luxurious stanzas than in Don Juan: the noble English stage, it is, on the whole, the most author shows an absolute control over his means, splendid specimen which our language affords of and at every cadence, rhyme, or construction, that species of tragedy which was the exclusive however whimsical, delights us with novel and object of Lord Byron's admiration. Cain is one magical associations. We heartily wish, that of the productions which has subjected its noble the fine poetry so richly scattered through the author to the severest denunciations, on account sixteen cantos of this most original and astonish- of the crime of impiety alleged against it; as it ing production, had not been mixed up with seems to have a tendency to call in question the In answer to the much that is equally frivolous as foolish; and benevolence of Providence. sincerely do we regret, that the alloying dross of loud and general outery which this production sensuality should run so freely through the other- occasioned, Lord Byron observed, in a letter to wise rich vein of the author's verse. his publisher, «If Cain' Le blasphemous, 'PaWhilst at Venice, Byron displayed a noble in-radise Lost' is blasphemous, and the words of stance of generosity. The house of a shoemaker, near his lordship's residence in St Samuel, was burnt to the ground, with every article it contained, and the proprietor reduced with a large family to the greatest indigence. When his lordship ascertained the afflicting circumstances of that calamity, he not only ordered a new and superior habitation to be immediately built for the sufferer, the whole expense of which was borne by him, but also presented the unfortunate tradesman with a sum equal in value to the whole of his lost stock in trade and furniture.

the Oxford gentleman, Evil, be thou my good,'
are from that very poem from the mouth of
Satan; and is there any thing more in that of
Lucifer in the mystery? Cain' is nothing more
thau a drama, not a piece of argument: if Lu-
cifer and Cain speak as the first rebel and first
murderer may be supposed to speak, nearly all
the rest of the personages talk also according to
their characters; and the stronger passions have
ever been permitted to the drama.
avoided introducing the Deity as in scripture,
though Milton does, and not very wisely either :
but have adopted his angel as sent to Cain in-
stead, on purpose to avoid shocking any feelings
on the subject, by falling short of what all un-

I have

adequate notion of the effect of the presence of Jehovah. The old mysteries introduced him liberally enough, and all this I avoided in the new one.»

Lord Byron avoided as much as possible any intercourse with his countrymen at Venice; and this seems to have been in a great measure necessary in order to prevent the intrusion of imperti-inspired men must fall short in, viz. giving an nent curiosity. In the appendix to one of his poems, written with reference to a book of travels, the author of which disclaimed any wish to be introduced to the noble lord, he loftily and sarcastically chastises the incivility of such a gratuitous declaration, expresses his « utter abhorrence of any contact with the travelling English; and thus concludes : Except Lords Lansdowne, Jersey, and Lauderdale, Messrs. Scott, Hammond, Sir Humphrey Davy, the late Mr Lewis, W. Bankes, M. Hoppner, Thomas Moore, Lord Kinnaird, his brother, Mr Joy, and Mr Hobhouse,

An event occurred at Ravenna during his lordship's stay there, which made a deep impression on him, and to which he alludes in the fifth canto of Don Juan. The military commandant of the place, suspected of being secretly a Carbonaro, but too powerful a man to be arrested, was assassinated opposite Lord Byron's palace. His lordship had his foot in the stirrup at the usual hour of exercise, when his horse started at the

yet his wavering never amounted to a disbelief of the count of that name, which connexion, with in the divine Founder of christianity.