BYRON.

HE Hon. George Gordon Byron, afterward Lord Byron, was born in London on the 22d of January, 1788. His father was a bad man and abandoned his wife and child, and his mother, though fond, was of a very violent temper. The boy was slightly lame from his birth, and always very sensitive in regard to his infirmity. He inherited his mother's temper. In 1798, on the death of his grand-uncle, he became Lord Byron, with his ancestral seat at Newstead Abbey. After attending a child's school at Aberdeen he was sent to Harrow, where he was esteemed by his companions, but not distinguished for scholarship. Thence he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he lived an idle, self-indulgent life, reading constantly but discursively.

As early as November, 1806, Byron published his first volume, Poems on Various Occasions, which, with alterations and additions, he issued as Hours of Idleness.... By George Gordon, Lord Byron, a Minor. This volume was severely and unjustly handled by the Edinburgh Review, and the author was so stung that he vented his wrath in a satire, imitated from Juvenal, entitled "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." Of this he was afterward very much ashamed. He then set out to travel, and, stopping in Spain, Italy and Malta, he went as far as Greece.

| On his return he brought with him, as the literary results of his journey, carefully elaborated Hints from Horace, which met with little favor, and the early cantos of "Childe Harold," which literally took the world by storm. "He woke up one morning and found himself famous." In 1811 he published "The Giaour;" in 1813 "The Bride of Abydos;" and in 1814 "The Corsair."

In 1815, Lord Byron made an unfortunate marriage with Miss Milbanke. After the birth of a daughter they separated, on account of entire incompatibility, never again to meet as man and wife. He once more left England for the Continent, an embittered and a misanthropic man. At Geneva he continued to work upon "Childe Harold" with no diminution of poetic power; there, also, he wrote the story of Bonnivard, "The Prisoner of Chillon." From 1817 until his departure for Greece he resided in Italy, leading a dissolute life, at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, where he wrote numerous other poems, several of his dramas and "Don Juan." The immoral tone of the last named shocked the public taste, but it contains passages of rare pathos, power and beauty, such as "The Isles of Greece," "The Shipwreck," "The Storming of Belgrade."

The struggles of Greece for independence of Turkey enlisted Byron's heartiest sympathies. He espoused the cause of Philhellenism with all his vigor, raised troops and accepted a command, and was determined to do or die in behalf of Grecian liberty. This promise was never fulfilled. He was seized

with a malarial fever, of which he died, on the 19th of April, 1824, amid the mourning of the Grecian people. Macaulay, in his epigrammatic style, compares him to Napoleon: "Two men have died within our recollection who, at a time of life at which few people have completed their education, had raised themselves, each in his own department, to the height of glory. One of them died at Longwood; the other, at Missolonghi."

In his tales in verse and in his dramas

Byron is always unconsciously his own hero —“Lara," "The Corsair," "The Giaour." He had none of the objective Shakesperean power: he could only present himself, and that self an evil example; and yet he was a great poet, in spite of his immorality and his misanthropy.

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER.

25th of December, 1720, this writer in after-life achieved distinction as an eminent lyric poet. He received his education at Oxford, became a friend of Dr. Johnson, and in 1747 produced his "Ode on the Passions," besides some lyric poems, among which were odes to "Mercy" and to Evening." "The Dirge in Cymbeline" is one of the efforts of his genius.

Collins became a prey to melancholy, and

Cornwall-was born in Wiltshire, England, on the 21st of November, 1789. In 1819 he made his first venture in a literary career by the publication of a volume en

were obliged to place him under the restraints of an asylum. He died in 1756.

SIR JOHN BOWRING.

Procter is more familiarly known under the pseudonym " Barry Cornwall," which is an imperfect anagram of his true name. The following is but a partial list of his published works: Marcian Colonna: An Italian Story; The Flood of Thessaly, and Other Poems and Poetical Works; Effigies Poetica; English Songs, and Other Small Poems; Lives of Edmund Kean and Charles Lamb; and a Memoir of Shakespeare. He is esteemed

land, on the 17th of October, 1792. In 1825 he became editor of the Westminster Review. He was well versed in modern. languages, especially the Slavonic, and made a collection of the ancient and popular poems of almost all the countries of Europe, translating them into verse. He was elected to Parliament in 1835, and in 1854 received the honor of knighthood. He died November 22, 1872.

Among the numerous writings of Bowring may be mentioned The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Specimens of the Russian Poets, Poetry of the Magyars and The Kingdom

and People of Siam. He was also the author of some excellent hymns.

A

GEORGE CROLY.

CLERGYMAN of the Anglican Church, Croly was a native of Dublin, Ireland, in which city he was born in the month of August, 1780. He became rector of St. Stephen's, Wallbrook, London, in 1835. He died on the 24th of November, 1860.

A poet, a prose-writer and a pulpit-orator, the writings of Croly take a wide range in the domain of literature. Some of his published works are: Salathiel: A Story of the Past, the Present and the Future; History of George IV.; Poetical Works; Catiline: A Tragedy; Life of Edmund Burke; and Marston, a novel.

WHAT CONSTITUTES A STATE? WHAT constitutes a State? Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;

Not bays and broad-armed ports Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies

ride;

Not starred and spangled courts Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.

No! Men, high-minded men, With powers as far above dull brutes endued, In forest, brake or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude; Men who their duties know,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,