XXIX.

HIS DEATH.

Unhappy Greece! Byron had courted it in the brightest dreams of his verse; and now beheld it in the most deplorable abandonment and distress. On every side disunion-all leaders, not one a soldier: torn by factions in turns; a dearth of treasure and of counsel, against an ever-increasing foe; no other defence than mountains, rivers, marshes, and men's hearts. Missolonghi threatened; the Suliotes, armed and all powerful, demand pay and pay there is not: the fleet dispersed; artillery who refused to serve their guns. The rest, who, if worse could be, alas! were even worse. Amid such, Byron all but alone'to lavish wealth and life, to scatter the accumulations of his economy (he had been, 'twas said, a miser), the produce of his works and his credit, and yet without deceiving himself as to the result of an unreasonable warfare. All the qualities of a good soldier he possessed: courage, hardihood, coolness, humanity. Conducting affairs in a liberal and compas sionate spirit, he succeeded in checking, both amongst his own followers and among the Turks, the commission of acts of ruthless barbarity in an art of itself murderous, however pompous and high-sounding the names with which the sophisms of the ambitious may bedeck it. To Greece, therefore, he appeared more than mortal. By him that herdsman's hut, destroyed by fire, was rebuilt; through him that fatherless family found bread, and an honoured existence; by him that soldier, that troop, that entire ship, was saved from the ruthless hands of the Turks, to whom he had given lessons and exampes in generosity. On one occasion, his vessel is delayed It is made known that she is in the hands of the Turks, and the consternation is universal. At last, she comes, she comes! At the momentous intelligence, all Missolonghi crowd the shore. The guns from the fortress and ships in harbour salute the happy return; all the troops, all the officials, with Mavrocordato at their head,

receive her with acclamations and salvoes of artillery, according to their custom, bands of music accompanying the national air, " δευτε παιδες των ελληνων."

Conceive, then, the universal lamentation when it is known that fatigues of the body, or rather those of the mind, had overwhelmed him; that he was ill, growing worse; that he was at the point of death! Death had more than once summoned him; had, as it is said, more than once tried to accelerate its approach, on some one of those days of sorrow when grief itself is cherished to fill the mind's void. Now, when the time of action had arrived, when his powerful will, amid so many obstacles, found at length a scope whereon to direct the combination of virtue, of genius, and of glory, Byron, far from his country, his friends, his mistress, his Ada-Byron, at thirty-six years of age, died.

The physicians knew not at first his malady.; then, he refused their prescriptions, nor would he again allow them to draw blood from him until too late. The last day of his life, Fletcher, his own faithful valet, attended him; to whom, feeling himself at the point of death, he strove to explain his last wishes.

"Shall I fetch pens and paper?" said the latter to him.

"Oh no," replied the dying man, "there is no time; it is now nearly over-go to my sister Augusta-tell her -go to Lady Byron-you will see her, and say-"

Here his voice faltered, and became gradually indistinct; notwithstanding which, he still continued to murmur to himself for nearly twenty minutes with much earnestness of manner, but in such a tone that only a few words could be distinguished. These, too, were only names" Augusta "-"Ada "-" Hobhouse "Kinnaird." He then said, "Now I have told you all." My Lord," replied Fletcher, "I have not understood a word your Lordship has been saying." "Not understand me?" exclaimed Lord Byron, with a look of the most intense distress." "What a pity!-then it is too late, all is over." "I hope not," answered Fletcher, "but the Lord's will be done.”

He then tried to utter a few words, of which none were intelligible, except "My sister, iny child."

It was the 19th of April, 1824, the Day of Passover, of devout rejoicing, but the hymn was unheard in the desolate city of Missolonghi; the cry of exultation"Christ is risen"-rested unspoken on the lips-the churches were crowded with people who propitiated the Deity; no other question was asked by those who met, but "How is Lord Byron?" At a quarter past six in the evening, a furious whirlwind swept over the city. The affrighted inhabitants rushed in crowds from their homes, in their superstitious grief exclaiming "The great man is gone.

He opened his eyes once again, and then closed them. for ever.

XXX.

THE GENERAL GRIEF.

Throughout the land was one universal sob of grief, of discouragement; Greece honored the hero, the benefactor, the fellow-soldier; they were not aware, poor Greeks, how much they should lament the poet. At his obsequies, celebrated on the Thursday after his death, Spiridione Tricoupi addressed the assembled multitude. Overcome with sincere grief, and interrupted by no mercenary lamentations, he summed up the virtues of the deceased, concluding thus: "When your exertions, my friends, shall have liberated us from the hands which have so long held us down in chains; from the hands which have torn from us our arms, our property, our brothers, our children, then will his spirit rejoice, then will his shade be satisfied! Yes, in that blessed hour of our freedom, the Archbishop will extend his sacred and free hand, and pronounce a blessing over his venerated tomb; the young warrior, sheathing his sword, red with the blood of his tyrannical oppressors, will bedeck it with laurel; the statesman will consecrate it with his oratory, and the poet, upon the marble, will become doubly inspired; virgins of Greece (whose beauty our illustrious fellow-citizen Byron has celebrated in so many of his poems) without fearing any longer contamination from the rapacious hands of our oppressors, crowning their heads with garlands,

will dance around it and sing of the beauty of our land which the poet of our age, has already commeinorated with such grace and truth. But what sorrowful thought now presses upon my mind. My fancy has carried me away. I had imagined the blessings of our bishops, the hymns and laurel crowns, and the dance of the virgins of Greece around the tomb of the benefactor of Greece, -but this tomb will not contain his precious remains, will remain void. For a few days only will his body remain on the face of our land-of his chosen country; it cannot be given to us; it must be borne to his own, his native, land which is honoured by his birth. Oh! daughter inost dearly beloved by him, your arms will receive him, your tears will bathe the tomb which shall contain his body and the tears of the orphans of Greece will be shed over the urn containing his precious heart. Missolonghi, his country, will ever watch over and protect with all her strength the urn containing his venerated heart, as a symbol of his love towards us. All Greece, clothed in mourning, and inconsolable, accompanies the procession, in which it is to be borne; all ecclesiastical, civil, and mili tary honors attend it. Learn, noble lady, learn that chieftains bore it on their shoulders, and carried it to the church; thousands of Greek soldiers lined the way through which it passed, with their muskets, which had destroyed so many tyrants, pointed towards the ground.

All this crowd of soldiers, ready to march at a moment against the implacable enemy of Christ and man, surrounded the funeral car, and swore never to forget the sacrifices made by your father for us, and never to allow the spot where his heart is placed to be trampled upon by barbarous and tyrannical feet. Thousands of Christian voices were in a inoment heard, and the temple of the Almighty resounded with supplications and prayers that his venerated remains might be safely conveyed to his native land, and that his soul might rest where the righteous alone find rest."

The urn was in fact raised upon the walls of Missolonghi, those walls which were ere long to fall in ruins, sacrificed by its own citizens, as Byron had sacrificed his own existence.

Along every shore of the Archipelago were celebrated the hero's funeral rites. Lepanto taken, the Greek warriors consecrated one of its bastions to their fellowsoldier, thrice inscribing it with his name. The Governor decreed him the title of Father of the Nation; a title than which none could be more illustrious, were it not sometimes the guerdon of adulation or of cowardice. The daughter of Byron was likewise addressed in the language of Homer.

As, in ancient times, the ashes of Themistocles were carried back to Athens, so the remains of the poet, after being embalmed, were conveyed to London. There, for some days, the body lay exposed to the view of the multitude. The indignation against him had ceased. England laid aside her haughty pride, and turned with eagerness to honour with her tears and eulogies the remains of the great poet, who, in his lifetime, she had persecuted. With a funeral cortège suitable to such a man and such a country, he was borne to his ancestral vault at Newstead, and the torch of fame, as happens oft, blazed most brilliantly beside the sepulchre,

XXXI.

HIS CHARACTER.

It is maintained that the character of Byron is to be recognised in the heroes of his compositions; in the dizziness of Manfred's intellectual ambition; in the sated dissipation of Childe Harold, who tears himself from social life through craving for material activity; in Lara, who vainly strives to stifle the remorse of a soul steeped in crime, but cannot. He has been converted into a Don Juan, even a Cain. And truly, in these portraitures, here and there, he has left some traits which appear reveal, under the hero's mask, the author (1). The wicked indubitably wish not to reveal their own misdeeds, though an exaggerated contempt for public opinion may indeed cause them to let others believe of them both vices and crimes. Certainly, regarding Byron

to