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The Bear, poor animal, died suddenly about a
fortnight ago. I much fear Bormer [?] will
have sad confused accounts, and also Mealey
who seems always stupid with ale. He has
about ninety pounds of Lord Byron's money to
account for, and God knows if he can give a
proper account of it, but of this positive that
they both shall, tho' I really cannot take the
trouble to examine them till you arrive.
as Mealey said he had none of Lord Byron's
money left which makes me think all is not right
there.

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Sir, &c. &c. &c., C. G. BYRON. Mr. Mealey was the Newstead bailiff.

17. Another month, and the upholsterer threatens to sell the goods he has seized: From Catherine Gordon Byron to J. Hanson, Esq.

Newstead Abbey, 9th June, 1810. SIR, You will see by the inclosed that Brothers says the things here are to be sold in a fortnight. I think it right to inform you of this. C. G. BYRON.

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aid of the first I will persevere in this resolu-
tion. . . . My "fathers' house shall not be
made a den of theives.". Newstead shall not
be sold. I am some thousand miles from
home with few resources, and the prospect of
their daily becoming less, I have neither friend
nor Counsellor, my only English servant de-
parts with this letter, my situation is forlorn
enough for a man of my birth and former ex-
pectations:- do not mistake this for com-
plaint however. I state the simple fact, and,
will never degrade myself by lamentations.
You have my answer.
I sup-

Commend me to your family.
pose I may kiss Harriet as you or Mrs. Han-
son will be my proxy, provided she is not
brance. I must not forget Mrs. Hanson who
grown too tall for such a token of remem-
has often been a mother to me, and as you
have always been a friend, I beg you to be-
lieve me with all sincerity Yours,
BYRON.

20. On his voyage back to England, with pockets so empty that he is compelled to write to Mr. Hanson for 20l. or 30l. to 18. There is a note of pathetic fidelity to town, the poet holds to his purpose of cover the charges of his journey from port in Mrs. Byron's avowal that she says keeping Newstead, and talks of joining nothing to the world of her son's affairs," one of the armies: and begs the lawyer to be no less discreet and reticent:

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From Catherine Gordon Byron to J. Hanson,
Esq.

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From Lord Byron to John Hanson, Esq.

Volage Frigate, July 4th, 1811, Bay of Biscay. DEAR SIR,- Expecting to arrive in a day or two and wishing to have a dispatch ready the moment of arrival I write to apprize you of my return. On the 2nd Inst. (two days ago) I completed exactly two years of absence from England, from London three weeks more

Newstead Abbey, 11th June, 1810. DEAR SIR,I have sent you the Keeper's receipt we have no stamps here. I would struggle with every difficulty to keep things together and God knows I have difficulties I wrote to you (by Wm. Fletcher) my enough to struggle with besides bad health. determination with regard to Newstead, viz, I am hardly able to sit up to write this letter not to sell it, by this I will abide, come what having a slow fever. What does Brothers may; nor shall I listen to an opinion on the mean? by saying everything is to be sold up subject. - My affairs, I must own, seem deshere in a fortnight, that is, in about a week perate enough, I shall adjust them as far as is from this date, ease my mind on this subject. in my power, and (after procuring a recomI never drop a word of my son's affairs to any mendation and appointment on Lord Welling one, and I hope you are equally carefulton's or Gen. Graham's supernumerary staff, suppose you have received my letter with Fanny Parkyns's enclosed.

C. G. BYRON.

P.S. If this letter is nonsense you must not be surprised as I hardly know what I am doing. fore he went to Greece, to sell Newstead, 19. Having repeatedly urged Byron, bethe lawyer made the state of affairs at the Abbey an occasion for repeating the distasteful advice. Here is Byron's reply, dated from Athens:

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which I am told I can easily obtain) I shall join one of the armies. In the mean time I am compelled to draw on you for 20 or 30 pounds to enable me to proceed from Port to London and pay the custom house duties. There is a not mean to reproach you, but I certainly Bill of Miller's in Albemarle's [?] which also must be paid immediately on my arrival; I do thought there were funds to answer so small a draft when I left London, however it has remained in his hands dishonoured more than two years.

However when I consider the sums I owe you professionally, I have nothing further to observe. I have made up my mind to bear the Ills of Poverty. Two years of travel have literally seasoned me to privations. - I have one question which must be resolved. Can I sell it? and Is Rochdale mine or not? why if it will bring a sum to clear my debts is it not sold? Newstead is out of the question,

and I do assure you that if any other person | written to them, and beg you will come down had made such a proposal, I should have lookt in it, as I cannot travel conveniently or propon it as an insult. The Annuities must be dis-erly without it. I trust that the decease of cussed as they best can, at least I shall relieve Mrs. B. will not interrupt the prosecution of my securities by taking them on myself, if the Editor of the Magazine, less for the mere other means of accommodation fail. I enclose punishment of the rascal than to set the quesyou Miller's bill, which I am most anxious to tion at rest, which with the ignorant and weakdischarge, as he is a most respectable man in- minded might leave a wrong impression. -I dependent of his profession, and if he were will have no stain on the Memory of my not, the affair of the draft is very disgraceful. mother. With a very large portion of foibles It shall be paid if I sell my watch, or strip and irritability, she was without a Vice (and in myself of every sous to answer for it, and also these days that is much). The laws of my the two years' interest. Indeed he has be- country shall do her and me justice in the first haved so well in the business, and his letters instance; but if they were deficient the laws of to me are so forbearing, that I shall never be modern honour should decide, cost what it easy till I settle the business. I remain with may, Gold or Blood. I will pursue to the last my best respects to all, BYRON. the cowardly calumniator of an absent man and a defenceless woman. The effects of the deceased are sealed and untouched. I have sent for her agent Mr. Bolton, to ascertain the proper steps, and nothing shall be done precipitately. I understand the jewels and clothes are of considerable value. Your very sincere and obliged servt.,

BYRON.

23. That Byron had not been misin. formed respecting the value of his moth. er's jewels appears from the appraisement at 1,130. in "A List of Sundry Articles of Jewellery Valued for J— Hanson, Esq., by Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, 1,130.”

21 Having borrowed the money for his travelling expenses from port to town, Byron is soon under the necessity of borrowing a larger sum (40%) of his solicitor for the journey to his mother's death-bed at Newstead. The date of the following note is in slight conflict with the abundant evidence that the poet left London on this occasion for Newstead on the night of August 1st, 1811, after receiving intelligence of his mother's death, which came to him within a few hours of the earlier intelligence of her serious illness. This 24. Byron's reasons for relinquishing slight discrepancy may be accounted for the prosecution of the proprietor and ed in several ways, the most probable expla-itor of the Scourge appear from the fol nation being that the note was written on lowing notes of the evening of the 1st of August, before the arrival of the news of the death, and was post-dated by a few hours either by design or accident:

Sir Vicary Gibbs's Opinions on the Libel in the "Scourge" of March last.

Opinion No. 1. Having regard to the time which has elapsed since the publication in

Lord Byron to J. Hanson, Esq., 6, Chancery March last of the Scourge's reply to Lord By

Lane.

St. James's Street, Aug. 2, 1811. DEAR SIR, Mrs. Byron is in the greatest danger as Mrs. Hanson who saw the letters can apprize you. To enable me to leave town, I have been under the necessity of drawing on you for forty pounds. The occasion must excuse. Yours very truly,

BYRON.

22. The preparations for Mrs. Byron's funeral were in progress when the poet wrote the following letter from the house of death to his solicitor :

From Lord Byron to John Hanson, Esq. Newstead Abbey, August 4th, 1811. MY DEAR SIR, - The Earl of Huntley and the Lady Jean Stewart daughter of James Ist of Scotland were the progenitors of Mrs. Byron.

I think it would be as well to correct the state

ment. Every thing is doing that can now be done plainly and decently for the interment. When you favour me with your company, be kind enough to bring down my carriage from Messrs. Baxter & Co., Long Acre. I have

ron's attack on Mr. Clarke, and to the fact that his lordship's unquestionably libellous attack on Mr. Clarke provoked the Scourge's reply, Sir V. Gibbs [dated from Lincoln's Inn, October 7th, 1811] discountenances and declines to recommend proceedings against the author and publishers either by way of Information or Indictment.

Further Opinion No. 2.- Saying that if His Lordship determines to proceed against the Scourge he had better do so by indictment, Sir V. G. reiterates his opinion that to a jury Lord Byron's assault on Mr. Clarke may seem to justify the Scourge's reply, or at least induce them to think Lord Byron as the original assailant should not proceed to punish his libeller.

The particulars of a state of affairs indicated more or less clearly by Byron's biographers will enable curious and unimaginative readers to realize more vividly than they have hitherto done how life went at Newstead while the lord of the "vast and venerable pile was on his pil. grimage, — while

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in the wilds Of fiery climes he made himself a home, And his soul drank their sunbeams. At the same time the vexations and humiliating annoyances Catherine Gordon Byron endured during her son's absence, through his want of filial solicitude and forethought, will be generally regarded as evidence that she was not without materials for a counter-statement to his reasons for thinking her an unsatisfactory

mother.

contrast. Sydney Smith tells us of the delight with which he once escaped from an "overdone" garden to an adjacent goose-common, and of the refreshing change he found in "cart-ruts, gravel. pits, coarse, ungentlemanlike grass, and all the varieties produced by neglect." A prim parterre overgrown with weeds is of course a sorry spectacle; but there is a négligé garment of nature's own putting on, than which nothing can be more tender and soothing. Even Bacon, with all his artificiality, desired a garden "framed as much as may be to a natural wildnesse;" and not only has unaided nature an instinctive leaning to the picturesque, but, left to herself, she speedily recovers from the effect of man's too much in

mound of earth will, after a time, borrow a kind of fitness and clothe itself in an apparel that shall make it no mean neighbor to more contemplated effects.

That

From St. James's Gazette. LANDSCAPE GARDENING IN THE PARKS. THE inhabitants of London are not un-termeddling. The commonest ditch or naturally proud of their parks; and in certain particulars they are worthy of the admiration which they generally excite. Large sums of money are annually expended in their maintenance and improve. But perhaps the least satisfactory fea ment, and the introduction of late years ture of the London parks is the unprofit of partial landscape effects has been at- able make-believe of their "lakes." tended with considerable success. That the landscape gardener realizes the magthese efforts are on the whole wisely ical effect of water in his picture is proved directed can hardly, however, be said. by the difficulties he will sometimes overWe attempt at once too much and too come to introduce it. But then the artist little; and our inventive faculty must be seeks to throw it into his composition in at a low ebb if, as was once asserted by something after nature's own manner. In the poet Gray, the skill of the English in the parks, on the contrary, the authorities landscape gardening is their only proof of are content to make an excavation, to lay original talent in matters of pleasure. In on a "main" and construct an outfall; one particular, indeed, we have not retro- and thenceforth it becomes a mere matter graded. The beauties of nature are, with of annual account between a 66 depart. us, ever more and more "assembled round ment" and the water companies. Thus, the haunts of domestic life." It may, in we have the unromantic, stone-bordered truth, be questioned whether modern fash- trough of St. James's Park; the dreary ion is not inclined to "assemble" a little Serpentine, with its "barren, barren too much. Good sense -the universal shore" of unsympathetic gravel; the desfoundation of correct taste is never olating Round Pond of Kensington Garmore gratefully manifested than in garden- dens, and the scarcely more interesting ing; and it is wonderful how much can be pool of the Regent's Park. Not a weed effectively done with comparatively slen- ventures to peep from the bosoms of der materials, as long as these are em- these mysterious reservoirs; only the ployed with an abiding sense of "fitness." armed tittlebat dares brave their turbid Overcrowding is, however, the bane of the depths. No waving reeds or sedges, no would be-picturesque gardener. Whether gathering beds of rushes, no graceful tufts by "carpet" beds or the close packing of of feathered grass, not an individual of blossom, the reiterated and tedious "mass- the whole delightful tribe of water side ing" of color instead of its enlivening plants breaks the arid monotony of the emphasis, he so outrages the modesty of shore. Everything is severe and uninvit nature that the other portions of the pic-ing, and the whole is unconsciously de ture have to be raised to the same exag- pressing to the spectator. Not so does gerated tone. There is a growing ten- nature deal with her watercourses. dency to introduce little "sets" of this impatient is she of restraint in this matter character in many of our parks. They that the most formal of man's works are scarcely harmonize, however, with their speedily reclaimed and naturalized. Not somewhat prosaic surroundings, but rather less failingly does the mimosa-tree indiprovoke the disquieting commentary of cate the wished-for spring in the desert

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than the stooping willows and luxuriant gent portion of the public would cheerfully bordering growth disclose the windings yield some of the garden oases of the of a brooklet almost concealed in the hol-parks, if by such a release of labor greater low beneath. So great are the charm and attention could be bestowed upon their refreshing suggestiveness of our English forest like aspects. In these days of luxwater-meadows, that we are apt to forget ury every balcony is turned into a garden, that their origin was as specifically utilita- and every entertainment becomes a flowerrian as that of the furrowed field. The show; there is the less need, therefore, narrow and precise channels, originally to fritter away time and money upon mere designed to subserve the baser uses of prettiness. But timber belongs to histhe farmstead, have become incorporated tory; its associations are inviolable; and with the landscape which they diversify; to maintain it is the imperative duty of and so harmonious is the blending that those who become its temporary guareven the idea of man's handiwork ceases dians. to be present. In like manner, the banks of canals are often completely naturalized, and in not a few instances they are beau. tifully clothed with flowers. On the other hand, the ornamental water in our parks is altogether denaturalized; and, though it must be supposed to be there as in some sort a representation of natural features, it can only be said to imitate nature most abominably.

It cannot be denied, however, that in recent years most picturesque additions have been made to the delightful vistas in which many of our parks abound. The suggestions of distance and the occasional surprises obtained by swelling ground and circuitous walks are entitled to much praise. An important element also is the introduction of a greater variety of forest trees: a real necessity in our capricious climate, which may be said to allow a certain annual average of foliage to be depended upon. The chestnuts, cruelly nipped after the too early promise of last March, have scarcely contributed to this year's greenery; and were it not for the sycamores, the planes, and the gaunt but welcome Lombardy poplars, London would at this moment be conspicuously deficient in refreshing verdure. The gradual dying off of the elms-a subject periodically referred to in Parliament, and as often set aside is an evil for which there appears to be no remedy. Whether the cause of this lamentable decay is in the soil or the atmosphere seems to be not clearly ascertained; but it is to be hoped that some searching investigation may yet lead to the succor of the many stalwart boles that give dignity to the glades of Kensington Gardens. The more intelli

There is little space in which to speak of the youngest, but certainly the most wholly charming and graceful, of the garden landscapes of London. Seated upon a former marsh, with no adjunct of parklike scenery, and not without some surroundings which ask for concealment, the subtropical division of Battersea Park deserves to be more widely known and more largely frequented. Its diversified and picturesque effects have been contrived with consummate art; and in this instance the lake - widely departing from the cold formality of the Middlesex waters-is judiciously aided in the task of clothing its banks with a natural vegetation, while on its surface repose masses of lilies and other aquatic plants in careless profusion. Luxuriant maples, flourishing palms and yuccas, giant ferns and indiarubber plants, mounds and rockeries covered with "ice" plants, and the still quainter growths of the cactus family, impart a distinctively foreign character to the scene throughout which an unbroken chord of harmony prevails. The moorhen croaks with a complacent satisfaction which tells us that her nest is at hand; while the thrush desires no more peaceful home all through the year. If we could throw over the picture the enchanting hush that solitude alone bestows! A vain desire: seeing that the park was expressly designed for the recreation of the toilers whom tramcars and railways deliver at its gates. There are not too many London sights that need tempt the citizen from his bed at five o'clock on a summer morning; but the subtropical garden at Battersea exquisite in its renewed freshness - is certainly one of them.

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