And when I use the phrase of Auld Lang Syne,'
Tis not addressed to you--the more's the pity
For me, I would rather take my wine
With you, than aught, (save Scott,) in your
proud city:

But, somehow, it may seem a school-boy's whine,
And yet I seek not to be grand nor witty,
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred

A whole one, and my heart flies to my head." This is not the only instance in which Lord Byron exhibits his attachment to Scotland. His remembrances of the

scenes of his childhood are recorded in an early poem on Loch na Garr, a mountain which he describes as "one of the most sublime and picturesque amongst our Caledonian Alps." Though the verses were among his earliest poetical efforts they have much poetical force, and are by no means devoid of harmony, as may be seen from the following extract :

"Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wan

der'd,

My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid; On Chieftains long perish'd my memory pon

der'd,

As daily I strode through the pine-covered

glade:

I sought not my home till the day's dying glory Gave place to the rays of the bright polar

star,

For fancy was cheer'd by traditional story, Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na

Garr."

Among the early amusements of his Lordship, were swimming and managing a boat, in both of which he is said to have acquired a great dexterity even in his childhood. In his aquatic excursions near Newstead Abbey, he had seldom any other companion than a large Newfoundland dog,to try whose sagacity and fidelity, he would sometimes fall out of the boat, as if by accident, when the dog would seize him and drag him ashore. On losing this dog, in the autumn of 1808, his Lordship caused a monument to be erected, commemorative of its attachment, with an inscription, from which we extract the following lines :-

"Ye who, perchance, behold this simple urn Pass on--it honours none you wish to mourn! To mark a friend's remains these stones arise-I never knew but one, and here he lies."

His Lordship, when very young, was placed under the guardianship of Mr. Wh-te, an eminent solicitor, who, by a singular coincidence of circumstances, had likewise become the guardian of the accomplished Miss Ch-worth, whose father had formerly fallen a victim to the deadly resentment of a very near relative of his Lordship.

To this lady, notwithstanding the family feud, it was the wish of their guardian, Lord Byron should be united; and there are pretty strong grounds for supposing that the inclinations of his

Lordship were not at variance with the intentions of his guardian. The lady, however, from family circumstances, and perhaps still more from an early-formed attachment to J. M-sters, Esq. then honoured, from his fashionable notoriety, with the more familiar appellation of "the gay Jack M-sters," was far from being a willing ward. His Lordship's pride would not suffer him to woo a reluctant fair one in propria persona, yet he expressed the warmth of his feelings very frequently in his invocations of the Muses.

Mr. M-sters was a pretty constant attendant upon Miss Cth, and for the purpose of avoiding him, Mr.Wh-te, his two sisters, Lord Byron, and the unwilling fair, were dragged in rapid succession from one watering-place to another throughout the country, while he followed in pursuit. They first went to Buxton, thence to Matlock, and from there, much against the will of Miss Cth, they fled at his approach. At these places our noble hero entered with great cordiality into all the fashionable amusements of the time; and though he affected a wish not to be known, he was generally distinguished by the hilarity of his heart, the urbanity of his manners, and the buoyancy of his animal spirits and intellectual powers. His Lordship, however, was well known to be for one very fashionable and very frequent amusement naturally unfit; hence he always expressed, if not by language, yet by strong unequivocal symptoms, an utter abhorrence to dancing. In other respects he promoted every thing conducive to the conviviality of the company. One morning a party who were at the New Bath came somewhat later than usual to breakfast, and requested some tongue. They were told that his Lordship had eaten it all. "I am very angry with his Lordship," said a lady, loud enough for him to hear the observation. "I am sorry for it, madam,' retorted Lord Byron, "but before I ate the tongue I was assured that you did not want it." A retort by no means gallant.

It was useless, however, contending with destiny. His Lordship's fate was not to be united with that of Miss C- -th, notwithstanding the ardency of his attachment, and the influence of their guardian.

In the course of this amour, and particularly towards its termination, Lord Byron addressed some beautiful lines to the fair, wayward object of his affections. Many of those amatory morceaux display considerable poetical excellence, mingled with much richness and tenderness of

feeling. The following stanzas are taken from Hours of Idleness, and although they are not clothed in that glittering drapery of language and imagery with which his Lordship's subsequent pieces are adorned, we think they display much of talent, and we know they contain much of truth :

"Oh! had my fate been joined with thine,
As once this pledge appeared a token;
These follies had not, then, been mine,
For then, my peace had not been broken.
To thee, these early faults I owe,

To thee, the wise and old reproving;
They know my sins, but do not know

'Twas thine to break the bonds of loving. For, once my soul, like thine was pure,

And all its rising fires could smother;
But now, thy vows no more endure,
Bestow'd by thee upon another.
Perhaps, his peace I could destroy,
And spoil the blisses that await him;
Yet, let my rival smile in joy,

For thy dear sake I cannot hate him.
Ah! since thy angel form is gone,

My heart no more can rest with any;
But what is sought in thee alone

Attempts, alas! to find in many.
Then fare thee well, deceitful maid,
"Twere vain and fruitless to regret thee;
Nor hope, nor memory yield their aid,

But pride may teach me to forget thee.

Yet all this giddy waste of years,

This tiresome round of palling pleasures; These varied loves, these matron's fears, These thoughtless strains to passion's mea

sures.

If thou wert mine, had all been hush'd;
This cheek now pale from early riot,
With passion's hectic ne'er had flush'd,
But bloom'd in calm domestic quiet.
Yes, once the rural scene was sweet,
For Nature seem'd to smile before thee;
And once my breast abhorr'd deceit,

For then it beat but to adore thee.

But, now, I seek for other joys;

To think, would drive my soul to madness: In thoughtless throngs, and empty noise, I conquer half my bosom's sadness. Yet even in these, a thought will steal, In spite of every vain endeavour; And fiends might pity what I feel,

To know, that thou art lost for ever." The anguish produced by unrequited love and disappointed ambition on a mind like his Lordship's, may be more easily conceived than described;-fits of gloominess and gaiety, desperation and dissipation, alternately prevailed in rapid succession, until the Muses, the invariable confidents of intense passion, gently soothed the irritation of his heart, by presenting to his over-credulous imagination a bright perspective of poetical honours and perennial triumphs. He shortly afterwards published his Minor Poems. Their fate and its consequences, in a literary point of view, have been already described. This last and longcherished hope was apparently blasted for ever, and he could no longer look for consolation, under the extreme anguish of

his feelings, to literary glory. The irrevocable decrees which successively destroyed his enraptured anticipations of love and fame, drove him to the verge of madness, his mind and conduct were entirely metamorphosed, naturally mirthful, he became suddenly melancholy; he shunned, despised, and hated every one; the sulkiness of his disposition was converted into the gall of misanthropy; and the conflicting passions, which like vultures preyed upon the tenderest fibres of his heart, goaded him to a determination to quit the scenes where circumstances and associations only served to awaken recollections which harrowed and tortured his soul to madness.

On arriving at the age of manhood, Lord Byron took a long leave of his native country, in the view of making a tour in foreign lands, but as the ordinary course of travelling through Europe, was then impeded by the war which prevailed between England and France, he embarked at Falmouth for Lisbon. In 1809, he passed through Portugal and Spain, touched at Malta and Sicily, and proceeded to the Morea and Constantinople, during part of which tour he was accompanied by Mr. John Cam Hobhouse, the present colleague of Sir Francis Burdett in the representation of Westminster. He was not of that class of travellers who go to learn, and his statements of fact are not always to be relied on, as they take the hue of his imagination, oftentimes brilliant and lively, sometimes splenetic and froward, but generally forcible and striking. A gentleman, at the request of a friend, furnished his Lordship with introductory letters to the principal persons at Malta. He presented the letters, and was waited on in return by the individuals to whom they were addressed; but he refused their invitations, shut himself up during the greater part of his stay there, and of course had little, if any opportunity of knowing any thing about the country or its inhabitants. Neverthe"the crime of less, he presumes to say, assassination is not confined to Portugal. In Sicily and Malta we are knocked on the head at a handsome average nightly; and not a Sicilian or Maltese is ever punished." Nothing can be more erroneous as regards Malta, and we are assured by a gentleman who resided there for four years, shortly previous to Lord Byron's visit, that out of a population of nearly 100,000 natives, with a garrison of 3 or 4,000 soldiers, and a harbour constantly frequented by great numbers of foreigners, only two persons were killed in all that time; one by a robber who broke into a house to plunder it, and the other in

After the battle of Busaco, the glorious campaign of 1810, and the expulsion of Massena's army from Lisbon, his Lordship found he was mistaken; and his apology was curious. As I found the Portuguese, so I have characterised them. That they are since improved, at least in courage, is evident."

It is somewhat singular that his Lordship should have then had a narrow escape from a fever in the vicinity of the place where he has just ended his life, and when he experienced the fidelity of the Albanians.

"When, in 1810," he says, "after the departure of my friend, Mr. Hobhouse, for England, I was seized with a severe fever in the Morea; these men (Albanians) saved my life, by frightening away my physician, whose throat they threatened to cut, if I was not cured within a given time. To this consolatory assurance of posthumous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr. Romanelli's prescriptions, I attribute my recovery. I had left my last remaining English servant at Athens; my dragoman, or interpreter, was as ill as myself, and my poor arnaouts nursed me with an attention which would have done honour to civilization."

While the Salsette frigate, in which Lord Byron was a passenger to Constantinople, lay in the Dardanelles, a discourse arose among some of the officers respecting the practicability of swimming across the Hellespont.-Lord Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead agreed to make the trial; they accordingly attempted this enterprise on the 3rd of May, 1810. The following is the account given of it by his Lordship:-

"The whole distance from Abydos, the place from whence we started, to our landing at Sestos on the other side, including the length we were carried by the current, was computed by those on board the frigate at upwards of four English miles; though the actual breadth is barely one. The rapidity of the current is such, that no boat can row directly

across; and it may in some measure be estimated, from the circumstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the parties in an hour and five, and by the other, in an hour and ten minutes. The water was extremely cold, from the melting of the mountain snows. About three weeks before, we had made an attempt; but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same morning, and the water being of an icy chillness, we found it necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anchored below the castles, when we swam the Straits, as just stated, entering a considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic, fort. Chevalier says, that a young Jew swam the same distance for his mistress; and Olivier mentions its having been done by a Neapolitan; but our Consul at Tarragona remembered neither of those circumstances, and tried to dissuade us from the attempt. A number of the Salsette's crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance; and the only thing that surprised me was, that as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's story, no traveller had endeavoured to ascertain its practicability.'

The result of this notable adventure Lord Byron recorded in some lively lines, comparing himself with Leander, and concluding thus:

" "Twere hard to say who fared the best;

Sad mortals, thus the Gods still plague you. He lost his labour, I my jest;

For he was drown'd, and I've the ague."

When Lord Byron and his company visited Athens, they were greatly mortified, and thoroughly indignant, to see the place dismantled of many of the beauties which had rendered the spot, even in its dilapidated state, sacred in the estimation of all travellers who possessed any reverence for the genius of antiquity. But the ravages of time, and those committed by barbarians, bore no comparison to the extent of the spoliation recently perpetrated in the name, and by the orders of an English ambassador at the Porte, who had exerted his influence so effectually as almost to demolish several of the finest of the temples that were then remaining. After this it was too much in the spirit of Erostratus for the same nobleman to cause his own name, together with that of his wife, to be inscribed on a pillar of the temple of Minerva. This extraordinary mark of vanity, however, was actually executed in a very conspicuous manner, and deeply engraved in the marble, at a considerable elevation. Lord Byron, on beholding this inscription, was so much hurt, and conceived such an abhorrence

of this presumption, which he considered as almost amounting to sacrilege, that with great labour, and difficulty, he got himself raised up to the requisite height, and obliterated the name of the Earl, but gallantly left that of the lady untouched. Besides this act of zeal, he adopted another and severer method of humbling the pride of his brother peer; for, on the west side of the same temple, he caused the following monkish lines to be very deeply cut, in large characters :

"Quod non fecerunt Goti,
Hoc fecerunt Scoti."'

But, the resentment of Lord Byron was not limited to mere localities. He invoked his powerful muse on the occasion, and, as if he had been actually inspired by the genius of the place, he wrote a poem, the opening part of which, constitutes the introduction to the second canto of Childe Harold, but the remainder was suppressed as being too caustic for publication. The public has not, however, lost his Lordship's opinions on this subject, for in his short poem of the Curse of Minerva, he has been very severe on the conduct of the Earl of Elgin, in despoiling the Parthenon during his embassy to the Ottoman Porte. Minerva is described as recounting the spoliation of Athens by various hands, and particularly Lord Elgin, whom the goddess thus denounces :--

"Mortal! (the blue-eyed maid resumed once more)

Bear back my mandate to thy native shore;
Though fallen, alas! this vengeance yet is mine,
To turn my counsels far from lands like thine.
Hear, then, in silence, Pallas' stern behest,
Hear, and believe, for time will tell the rest:
First on the head of him who did the deed
My curse shall light, on him and all his seed;
Without one spark of intellectual fire,
Be all his sons as senseless as their sire:
If one with wit the parent-breed disgrace,
Believe him bastard of a better race;
Still with his hireling Artists let him prate,
And folly's praise repay for wisdom's hate.
Long of her Patron's gusto let them tell,
Whose noblest native gusto---is to sell:
To sell, and make (may shame record the day)
The State receiver of his pilfer'd prey!

*

*

*

*

*

And last of all, amidst the gaping crew,
Some calm spectator, as he takes his view
In silent admiration, mix'd with grief,
Admires the plunderer, but abhors the thief:
Loathed in life, scarce pardoned in the dust,
May hate pursue his sacrilegious lust;
Link'd with the fool who fired th' Ephesian dome,
Shall vengeance follow far beyond the tomb.
Erostratus and ***** e'er shall shine
In many a branding page and burning line.
Alike condemn'd for aye to stand accursed,
Perchance the second viler than the first.
So let him stand, through ages yet unborn,
Fix'd statue on the pedestal of scorn!"

In 1811, Lord Byron's mother died, and he regretted her loss in terms of filial affection, though some of the daily papers have asserted that Donna Inez in his

poem of Don Juan was intended as a portrait of his mother, than which nothing can be more erroneous. Lord Byron always spoke of his mother in terms of affection. "In the short space of one month," says he, "I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who had made that being tolerable. To me the lines of Young are no fiction :".

The shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was lain, &c.'

The other two individuals alluded to, were a Mr. Matthews of Cambridge, and the Hon. J. W. of the Guards. Of the latter he speaks thus feelingly :—

'Oh, known the earliest, and esteem'd the most! Dear to a heart where nought was left so dear! Though to my hopeless days for ever lost, In dreams deny me not to see thee here! And morn in secret shall renew the tear Of consciousness awaking to her woes, And fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier, Till my frail frame return to whence it rose, And mourn'd and mourner lie united in repose."

After an absence of nearly three years, Lord Byron revisited his native shores, and exhibited the advantages of travelling in his "Childe Harold," the plan of which was laid in Albania and prosecuted at Athens, where it received some of its finest touches and most splendid ornaments. The hint of adapting the style and stanza of Spenser to a journal of travels and opinions, was taken from an observation of Dr. Beattie, on which Lord Byron formed the plan of giving to the world a poetical history of his observations in foreign lands. The way in which the appearance of the poem of Childe Harold was greeted by the Edinburgh Reviewers is amusing. "Lord Byron has improved marvellously," said they, since his last appearance at our tribunal; and this, though it bear a very affected title, is really a volume of very considerable power."

It soon appeared that his Lordship had a great facility of writing. He published in rapid succession the Giaour, the Bride of Abydos, and the Corsair, the first inscribed to Mr. Rogers, the second to Lord Holland, and the third to Mr. Thomas Moore. The spirit and brilliancy of all these poems were great. In the dedication of the "Corsair," he said it was the last production with which he should trespass on public patience for some years -a sort of promise which poets are not much expected to keep, and are easily excused for breaking. This dedication so highly flattering to the talents of Mr. Moore, was as follows:

"My dear Moore-I dedicate to you the last production with which I shall trespass on public patience, and your indulgence, for some years; and I own

that I feel anxious to avail myself of this latest and only opportunity of adorning my pages with a name, consecrated by unshaken public principle, and the most undoubted and various talents. While Ireland ranks you among the firmest of her patriots; while you stand alone the first of her bards in her estimation, and Britain ratifies and confirms the decree, permit one, whose only regret, since our first acquaintance, has been the years he had lost before it commenced, to add the humble, but sincere suffrage of friendship, to the voice of more than one na¬ tion."

On the 2nd of January, 1815, Lord Byron married, at Seham, in the county of Durham, the only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbank Noel, Baronet, and towards the close of the same year, his Lady brought him a daughter, for whom he always manifested the strongest affection. Within a few weeks, however, after that event, a separation took place, for which various causes have been stated. This difference excited a prodigious sensation at the time, and was the last stab to the happiness of his Lordship. We would not aggravate the feelings of a widowed mother, but justice to the memory of the noble bard compels us to express our conviction, that the separation on his part was involuntary, and although he vented his spleen in some angry verses, yet how deeply he loved Lady Byron will be seen from the following stanzas, which he addressed to her a few months before their separation:

TO JESSY.

"THERE is a mystic thread of life
So dearly wreathed with mine alone,
That Destiny's relentless knife

At once must sever both or none.

There is a form on which these eyes
Have often gazed with fond delight;
By day that form their joy supplies,
And dreams restore it through the night.

There is a voice whose tones inspire

Such thrills of rapture through my breast; I would not hear a seraph choir,

Unless that voice could join the rest.

There is a face whose blushes tell
Affection's tale upon the cheek;
But pallid at one fond farewell,
Proclaims more love than words can speak.

There is a lip which mine hath prest,
And none had ever prest before;
It vowed to make me sweetly blest,
And mine, mine only press it more.

There is a bosom--all my own--

Hath pillow'd oft this aching head; A mouth which smiles on me alone,

An eye whose tears with mine are shed.

There are two hearts whose movements thrill
In unison so closely sweet!
That, pulse to pulse, responsive still,

That both must heave--or cease to beat.

There are two souls whose equal flow, In gentle streams so calmly run, That when they part-they part!--ah, no! They cannot part-those souls are one." Within a few weeks, however, after the separation took place, Lord Byron suddenly left the kingdom with the resolution never to return.

He crossed over to France, through which he passed rapidly to Brussels, taking in his way a survey of the field of Waterloo. He proceeded to Coblentz, and thence up the Rhine as far as Basle. After visiting some of the most remarkable scenes in Switzerland, he proceeded to the North of Italy. He took up his abode for some time at Venice, where he was joined by Mr. Hobhouse, who accompanied him in an excursion to Rome, where he completed his Childe Harold.

During the residence of Lord Byron at Venice, the house of a shoemaker was destroyed by fire; and every article belonging to the poor man being lost, he was, with a large family, reduced to a most pitiable condition. The noble bard having ascertained the afflicting circumstances of this event, ordered a new and superior habitation to be immediately built for the sufferer; in addition to which he presented the unfortunate tradesman with a sum equal in value to the whole of his lost stock in trade and furniture.

Another trait of his Lordship's urbanity and beneficence may here be related :

Previous to his Lordship's marriage, when he resided in the Albany, a young lady of poetical talent, but not successful in her literary attempts, found herself involved in difficulties, owing to the misfortunes of her family. Those friends who might have served her were abroad, and she knew not where to address them; her distresses accumulated, and she felt so severely the state of those who were most dear to her, that she resolved to apply to Lord Byron, on the plea of authorship, by soliciting his subscription to her poems. It is singular, that her idea of his character was formed from his works, the perusal of which made her conclude him of an amiable disposition, and one who was much misunderstood by the world. Such as her imagination had portrayed him, she found him in reality. She simply stated her motive for applying to him, and requested his subscription; when he, in the most delicate manner, prevented her from dwelling on any painful subject, by immediately entering into some general conversation, in the course of which he wrote a draft, which he folded up and presented to her, saying, "that was his subscription." She did not, of course, look at the paper while she remained with him, which was some