franchi palace, his lordship wrote the following including his father, had moved in high society. la the prolet alone no deception is found. f have tried, in its turn, all that life can supply; I have Lask d in the beams of a dark rolling eye; I have loved-who has not? but what tongue will declare That pleasure existed while passion was there? In the days of our youth, when the heart's in its spring, And dreates that affection can never take wing, I had friends-who has not? but what tongue will avow That friends, rosy wine, are so faithful as thou? •The breast of a mistress some boy may estrange, Friend up shifts with the sun-beam, thou never canst Than grow st old-who does not? but on earth what dunge. appears. Whose virtues, like thine, but increase with our years. Yet if blest to the utmost that love can bestow, | Stould a rival bow down to our idol below, [ We are jealous—who's not? thou hast no such alloy, for the more that enjoy thee, the more they enjoy. When the season of youth and its jollities past, hiz etage we fly to the goblet at last, Then we find-who does not in the flow of the soul, That truth, as of yore, is confined to the bowl. When the box of Pandora was opened on earth, ↑ And Memory's triumph commenced over Mirth, Before we close the details of what may be termed Lord Byron's poetical life-before we enter on the painfully interesting particulars con'nected with the last and noblest part he performed in his brilliant but brief career-we beg eave to introduce the following summary of his character: There seems to have been something of a macal antidote in Lord Byron's genius to the strange propensities to evil arising both from his natural passions and temper, and the accidental unpropitious circumstances of his life. In no man were good and evil mingled in such strange intimacy, and in such strange proportions. His ons were extraordinarily violent and fierce; and his temper, uneasy, bitter and capricious. His pride was deep and gloomy, and his ambition ar lent and uncontrollable. All these were xactly such as the fortuitous position of his inFancy, boyhood, and first manhood, tended to ravate by discouragements, crosses, and morIt also.18. He was directly and immediately rung from a stock of old nobility, of an historic Lame, of venerable antiquity. All his alliances, But this gay father died, improvident or reckless of the future, and left him to waste his childhood in poverty and dereliction, in the remote town of Aberdeen, among the few maternal relations who yet would not utterly abandon his mother's shipwrecked fortunes. At the age of six years he became presumptive heir to the family peerage, and at the age of ten the peerage devolved on him. He then was sent to the public school of Harrow; but neither his person, his acquired habits, his scholarship, nor his temper, fitted him for this strange arena. A peer, not immediately issuing from the fashionable circles, and not as rich as foolish boys suppose a peer ought to be, must have a wonderful tact of society, and a managing, bending, intriguing temper, to play his part with éclat, or with comfort, or even without degradation. All the treatment which Lord Byron now received confirmed the bitterness of a disposition and feelings naturally sour, and already augmented by chilling solitude, or an uncongenial sphere of society. To a mind endowed with intense sensibility and unextinguishable ambition, these circumstances operated in cherishing melancholy, and even misanthropy. They bred an intractability to the light humours, the heartless cheerfulness, and all the artillery of unthinking emptiness by which the energies of the bosom are damped and broken. There were implanted within him the seeds of profound reflection and emotion, which grew in him to such strength, that the tameness, the petty passions, and frivolous desires of mankind in their ordinary intercourses of pleasure and dissipation, could never long retain him in their chains without weariness and disgust, even when they courted, dandled, flattered, and admired him. lle was unskilled in their pitiful accomplishments, and disdained the trifling aims of their vanity, and the tests of excellence by which they were actuated, and by which they judged. He never, therefore, enjoyed their blandishments, and, ere long, broke like a giant from their bonds. There can be no doubt, that disappointments, working on a sombre temper, and the consequent melancholy and sensitiveness aiding, and aided by, the spells of the muse, were Lord Byron's preservatives; at least, that they produced redeeming splendours, and moments of pure and untainted intellect, and exalting ebullitions of grand or tender sentiment, or noble passion, which, by fits at least, if not always, adorned his compositions, and will for ever electrify and elevate his readers. Had Lord Byron succeeded in the ordinary way to his peerage, accompanied by the usual circumstances of prosperity and ease, had nothing occurred capable of stimulating to strong personal exertions, the mighty seeds within him had probably been worse than neutral-they had worked to unqualified mischief! In many cases this is not the effect of prosperity; but Lord Byron's qualities were of a very peculiar cast, as well as intense and unrivalled in degree. When, in the spring of 1816, Lord Byron quitted England, to return to it no more, he had a dark, perilous, and appalling prospect before him. The chances against the due future use of his miraculous and fearful gifts of genius, poisoned and frenzied as they were by blighted hopes and all the evil incidents which had befallen him, were too numerous to be calculated without overwhelming dismay! Few persons, of a sensibility a little above the common, would have escaped the pit of black and unmitigated despondence! but Lord Byron's elasticity of mind recovered itself, and soon rose to far higher conceptions and performances than before. He passed the summer upon the banks of the lake of Geneva! With what enthusiasm he enjoyed, and with what contemplations he dwelt among its scenery, his own poetry soon exhibited to the world! He has been censured for his peculiarities, his unsocial life, and his disregard of the habits, the decorums, and the civilities of the world, and of the rank to which he belonged. He might have pleaded, that the world rejected him, and he the world; but the charge is idle in itself, admitting it to have originated with his own will. A man has a right to live in solitude if he chooses it; and, above all, he who gives such fruits of his solitude! character is little worthy of enthusiasm,' at the same time that you mention his productions in the manner they deserve. I have known Walter Scott long and well, and in occasional situations which call forth the real character, and I can assure you that his character is worthy of admiration; that, of all men, he is the most open, the most honourable, the most amiable. With his politics I have nothing to do: they differ from mine, which renders it difficult for me to speak of them. But he is perfectly sincere in them, and sincerity may be humble, but she can not be servile. I pray you, therefore, to correct or soften that passage. You may, perhaps, attribute this officiousness of mine to a false affectation of candour, as I happen to be a writer also. Attribute it to what motive you please, but believe the truth. I say that Walter Scott is as nearly a thorough good man as man can be, because I know it by experience to be the case." The motives which ultimately induced Lord Byron to leave Italy, and join the Greeks, struggling for emancipation, are sufficiently obvious. It was in Greece that his high poetical faculties had been first fully developed. Greece, a land of the most venerable and illustrious history, of peculiarly grand and beautiful scenery, inhabited by various races of the most wild and picturesque manners, was to him the land of excitement,— never-cloying, never-wearying, never-changing excitement. It was necessarily the chosen and favourite spot of a man of powerful and original intellect, of quick and sensible feelings, of a restless and untameable spirit, of various information, and who, above all, was satiated with common enjoyments, and disgusted with what appeared to In the autumn of 1822, Lord Byron quitted him to be the formality, hypocrisy and sameness Pisa, and went to Genoa, where he remained of daily life. Dwelling upon that country, as it throughout the winter. A letter written by his is clear from all Lord Byron's writings he did, lordship, while at Genoa, is singularly honourable with the fondest solicitude, and being, as he was to him, and is the more entitled to notice, as it well known to be, an ardent, though, perhaps, tends to diminish the credibility of an assertion not a very systematic lover of freedom, he could made since his death, that he could bear no rival be no unconcerned spectator of its recent revoin fame, but instantly became animated with a lution: and as soon as it seemed to him that his bitter jealousy and hatred of any person who presence might be useful, he prepared to visit attracted the public attention from himself. If once more the shores of Greece. It is not imthere be a living being towards whom, according probable, also, that he had become ambitious of to that statement, Lord Byron would have expe- a name as distinguished for deeds as it was alrienced such a sentiment, it must be the pre-ready by his writings. A glorious and novel casumed author of Waverley. And yet, in a letter reer apparently presented itself, and he deterto Monsieur Beyle, dated May 29, 1823, the fol- mined to try the event. lowing are the just and liberal expressions used by Lord Byron, in adverting to a pamphlet which had been recently published by Monsieur Beyle. There is one part of your observations in the pamphlet which I shall venture to remark upon: -it regards Walter Scott. You say that his Lord Byron embarked at Leghorn, and arrived in Cephalonia in the early part of August, 1823, attended by a suite of six or seven friends, in an English vessel (the Hercules, Captain Scott), which he had chartered for the express purpose of taking him to Greece. His lordship had never seen any of the volcanic mountains, and for this purpose the vessel deviated from its regular of the country in paying for the religious cerecourse, in order to pass the island of Strom- monies which they deemed essential to their sucbol, and lay off that place a whole night, in cess. the hopes of witnessing the usual phenomena, but, for the first time within the memory of man, the volcano emitted no fire. The disappointed poet was obliged to proceed, in no good humour with the fabled forge of Vulcan. Greece, though with a fair prospect of ultimate triumph, was at that time in an unsettled state. The third campaign had commenced, with several instances of distinguished success-her arms were every where victorious, but her councils were distracted. Western Greece was in a critical situation, and although the heroic Marco Botzaris had not fillen in vain, yet the glorious enterprize in which be perished only checked, and did not present, the advance of the Turks towards Anatotica and Missolonghi. This gallant chief, worthy of the best days of Greece, hailed with transport, Lord Byron's arrival in that country and his last act before proceeding to the attack, in which he fell, was to write a warm invitation for his lordship to come to Missolonghi. In his letter, which he addressed to a friend at Missolight, Botzaris alludes to almost the first proreeding of Lord Byron in Greece, which was the arming and provisioning of forty Suliotes, whom The sent to join in the defence of Missolonghi. After the battle, Lord Byron transmitted bandages and medicines, of which he had brought a large store from Italy, and pecuniary succour to those who had been wounded. He had already made a very generous offer to the government. He ¡ says, in a letter, « I offered to advance a thousand dollars a month, for the succour of Missolonghn, and the Suliotes under Botzaris (since kiled,; but the government have answered me through--of this island, that they wish to confer with me previously, which is, in fact, saying they wish me to spend my money in some other direction. I will take care that it is for the public ranse, otherwise I will not advance a para. The of position say they want to cajole me, and the party in power say the others wish to seduce me; , between the two, I have a difficult part to play: however I will have nothing to do with the factions, unless to reconcile then, if pos sible.. Lord Byron established himself for some time at the small village of Metaxata, in Cephalonia, and dispatched two friends, Mr Trelawney and Mr Hamilton Browne, with a letter to the Greek government, in order to collect intelligence as to the real state of things. His lordship's generosity was almost daily exercised in his new reighbourhood. He provided for many Italian Families in distress, and even indulged the people In the mean while, Lord Byron's friends proceeded to Tripolitza, and found Colocotroni (the enemy of Mavrocordato, who had been compelled to flee from the presidency), in great power: his palace was filled with armed men, like the castle of some ancient feudal chief, and a good idea of his character may be formed from the language he held. He declared that he had told Mavrocordato that, unless he desisted from his intrigues, he would put him on an ass and whip him out of the Morea, and that he had only been withheld from doing so by the representation of his friends, who had said that it would injure the cause. They next proceeded to Salamis, where the congress was sitting, and Mr Trelawney agreed to accompany Odysseus, a brave mountain chief, into Negropont. At this time the Greeks were preparing for many active enterprises. Marco Botzaris' brother, with his Suliotes and Mavrocordato, were to take charge of Missolonghi, which, at that time (October, 1823), was in a very critical state, being blockaded both by land and sea. « There have been," says Mr Trelawney, thirty battles fought and won by the late Marco Botzaris, and his gallant tribe of Suliotes, who are shut up in Missolonghi. If it fall, Athens will be in danger, and thousands of throats cut. A few thousand dollars would provide ships to relieve it; a portion of this sum is raised and I would coin my heart to save this key of Greece!» A report like this was sufficient to show the point where succour was most needed, and Lord Byron's determination to relieve Missolonghi was still more decidedly confirmed by a letter which he received from Mavrocordato. Mavrocordato was at this time endeavouring to collect a fleet for the relief of Missolonghi, and Lord Byron generously offered to advance four hundred thousand piastres (about 12,000l.) to pay for fitting it out. In a letter in which he announced this his noble intention, he alluded to the dissensions in Greece, and stated, that if these continued, all hope of a loan in Englaud, or of assistance, or even good wishes from abroad, would be at an end. I must frankly confess," he says in his letter, « that unless union and order are confirmed, all hopes of a loan will be in vain, and all the assistance which the Greeks could expect from abroad, an assistance which might be neither trifling nor worthless, will be suspended or destroyed, and, what is worse, the great powers of Europe, of whom no one was an enemy to Greece, but seemed inclined to favour her in consenting to the establishment of an independent dered, and, embarking his horses and effects, Lord power, will be persuaded that the Greeks are unable to govern themselves, and will, perhaps, themselves undertake to arrange your disorders in such a way as to blast the brightest hopes you indulge, and are indulged by your friends. « And allow me to add, once for all, I desire the well-being of Greece, and nothing else; I will do all I can to secure it; but I cannot consent | I never will consent to the English public, or English individuals being deceived as to the real | state of Greek affairs. The rest, gentlemen, de-| pends on you; you have fought gloriously; act honourably towards your fellow-citizens and towards the world, and then it will no more be said, as has been repeated for two thousand years with the Roman historian, that Philopomen was the last of the Grecians. Let not calumny itself (and it is difficult to guard against it in so difficult a struggle) compare the Turkish Pacha with the patriot Greek in peace, after you have exterminated him in war." a The dissensions among the Greek chiefs evidently gave great pain to Lord Byron, whose sensibility was keenly affected by the slightest circumstance which he considered likely to retard the deliverance of Greece. For my part, he observes in another of his letters, I will stick by the cause while a plank remains which can be honourably clung to; if I quit it, it will be by the Greeks' conduct, and not the Holy Allies, or the holier Mussulmans." In a letter to his banker at Cephalonia, he says: « I hope things here will go well, some time or other; I will stick by the cause as long as a cause exists.» Byrou sailed from Argostoli on the 29th of December. At Zante, his lordship took a considerable quantity of specie on board, and proceeded towards Missoloughi. Two accidents occurred in this short passage. Count Gamba, who had accompanied his lordship from Leghorn, had been charged with the vessel in which the horses and part of the money were embarked. When off Chiarenza, a point which lies between Zante and the place of their destination, they were surprised at daylight on finding themselves under the bows of a Turkish frigate. Owing, however, to the activity displayed on board Lord Byron's vessel, and her superior sailing, she escaped, while the second was fired at, brought to, and carried into Patras. Count Gamba and his companions being taken before Yusuff Pacha, fully expected to share the fate of some unfortunate men whom that sanguinary chief had sacrificed the preceding year at Previsa, and their fears would most probably have been realized, had it not been for the presence of mind displayed by the count, who, assuming an air of hauteur and indifference, accused the captain of the frigate of a scandalous breach of neutrality, in firing at and detaining a vessel under English colours, and concluded by informing Yusuff, that he might expect the vengeance of the British government in thus interrupting a nobleman who was merely on his travels, and bound to Calamos. The Turkish chief, on recognizing in the master of the vessel a person who had saved his life in the Black Sea fifteen years before, not only consented to the vessel's release, but treated the whole of the passengers with the utmost attention, and even urged them to take a day's shooting in the neighbourhood. His playful humour sometimes broke out amidst the deep anxiety he felt for the success of the Greeks. He ridiculed with great pleasantry some of the supplies which had been sent out from England by the Greek committee. In one of his letters, also, after alluding to his having advanced 4,000l., and expecting to be called on for 4,000l., more, he says: «How can I refuse if theyger of being captured by the Turks. (the Greeks) will fight, and especially if I should happen to be in their company? I therefore request and require that you should apprise my trusty and trust-worthy trustee and banker, and crown, and sheet-anchor, Douglas Kinnaird the honourable, that he prepare all monies of mine, including the purchase-money of Rochdale manor, and mine income for the year A. D. 1874, to answer and anticipate any orders or drafts of mine, for the good cause, in good and lawful money of Great Britain, etc. etc. etc. May you live a' thousand years! which is nine hundred and ninety-nine longer than the Spanish Cortes constitution." Owing to contrary winds, Lord Byron's vessel was obliged to take shelter at the Scropes, a cluster of rocks within a few miles of Missolonghi. While detained here, he was in considerable dan All being ready, two Ionian vessels were or Lord Byron was received at Missolonghi with enthusiastic demonstrations of joy. No mark of honour or welcome which the Greeks could devise was omitted. The ships anchored off the fortress fired a salute as he passed. Prince Mavrocordato, and all the authorities, with the troops and the population, met him on his landing, and accompanied him to the house which had been prepared for him, amidst the shouts of the multitude and the discharge of cannon. One of the first objects to which he turned his attention was to mitigate the ferocity with which the war had been carried on. The very day of his lordship's arrival was signalised by his rescuing a Turk, who had fallen into the hands of field, and unmanageable in a town, were, at this moment, peculiarly disposed to be obstinate, instrumental in preserving Missolonghi when besieged the previous autumn by the Turks; had been driven from their abodes; and the whole of their families were, at this time, in the town, destitute of either home or sufficient supplies. Of turbulent and reckless character, they kept the place in awe; and Mavrocordato having, unlike the other captains, no soldiers of his own, was glad to find a body of valiant mercenaries, especially if paid for out of the funds of another; and, consequently, was not disposed to treat them with harshness. Within a fortnight after Lord Byron's arrival, a burgher refusing to quarter some Suliotes, who rudely demanded entrance into his house, was killed, and a riot ensued, in which some lives were lost. Lord Byron's impatient spirit could ill brook the delay of a favourite scheme, but he saw, with the utmost chagrin, that the state of his troops was such as to render any attempt to lead them out at that time impracticable. sone Greek sailors. The individual thus saved, having been clothed by his orders, was kept in the house until an opportunity occurred of send-riotous, and mercenary. They had been chiefly ing him to Patras. Nor had his lordship been ¡ lớng at Missolonghi, before an opportunity presented itself for showing his sense of Yusuff Pacha's moderation in releasing Count Gamba. Hearing that 'there were four Turkish prisoners in the town, he requested that they might be placed in his hands. This being immediately granted, he sest them to Patras, with a letter addressed to the Turkish chief, expressing his hope that the prisouers thenceforward taken on both sides would be treated with humanity. This act was followed by another equally praise-worthy, which proved how anxious Lord Byron felt to give a new turn to the system of warfare hitherto pursued. A Greek cruizer having captured a Turkish boat, which there was a number of passengers, | chiefly women and children, they were also placed n the hands of Lord Byron, at his particular request; upon which a vessel was immediately , kurei, and the whole of them, to the number of twenty-four, were sent to Previsa, provided with mery requisite for their comfort daring the passage. The Turkish governor of Previsa thanked lordship, and assured him, that he would take care equal attention should be in future wn to the Greeks who might become pri Lopers. Another grand object with Lord Byron, and one which he never ceased to forward with the most anxious solicitude, was to reconcile the quarrels of the native chiefs, to make them friendly and confiding towards one another, and submissive to the orders of the government. He had neither time nor opportunity to carry this point to any great extent: much good was, however, done. The project of proceeding against Lepanto being thus suspended, at a moment when Lord Byron's enthusiasm was at its height, and when he had fully calculated on striking a blow which could not fail to be of the utmost service to the Greek cause, the unlooked-for disappointment preyed on his spirits, and produced a degree of irritability which, if it was not the sole cause, contributed greatly to a severe fit of epilepsy, with which he was attacked on the 15th of February. His lordship was sitting in the apartment of Colonel Stanhope, talking in a jocular manner with Mr Parry, the engineer, when it was observed, from occasional and rapid changes in his countenance, that he was suffering under Lord Byron landed at Missolonghi animated some strong emotion. On a sudden he complained with military ardour. After paying the fleet, of a weakness in one of his legs, and rose, but which, indeed, had only come out under the ex- finding himself unable to walk, he cried out for He then fell into a state of nervous pectation of receiving its arrears from the loan assistance. which he promised to make to the provisional go- and convulsive agitation, and was placed on a vernment, he set about forming a brigade of Su-bed. For some minutes his countenance was otes. Five hundred of these, the bravest and must resolate of the soldiers of Greece, were taken into his pay on the 1st of January, 1824. Au expedition against Lepanto was proposed, of which the command was given to Lord Byron. This exdition, however, had to experience delay and útsappointment. The Suliotes, conceiving that they had found a patron whose wealth was inexaustible, and whose generosity was boundless, termined to make the most of the occasion, and praceeded to the most extravagant demands on nar leader for arrears, and under other prefaces. These mountaineers, untameable in the much distorted. He however quickly recovered his senses, his speech returned, and he soon appeared perfectly well, although enfeebled and exhausted by the violence of the struggle. During the fit, he behaved with his usual extraordinary firmness, and his efforts in contending with, and attempting to master, the disease, are described as gigantic. In the course of the month, the attack was repeated four times; the violence of the disorder, at length, yielded to the remedies which his physicians advised, such as bleeding, cold bathing, perfect relaxation of mind, etc., and he gradually recovered. An accident, however, hap |