"You believe in Plato's three principles;

why not in the Trinity? One is not more "mystical than the other. I don't know why "I am considered an enemy to religion, and an "unbeliever. I disowned the other day that I "was of Shelley's school in metaphysics, though "I admired his poetry; not but what he has "changed his mode of thinking very much since he wrote the Notes to Queen Mab,' which I was accused of having a hand in. I "know, however, that I am considered an in"fidel. My wife and sister, when they joined parties, sent me prayer-books. There was a Mr." Mulock, who went about the Contianent preaching orthodoxy in polities› ‹ and religion, a writer of bad sonnets, and a "lecturer in worse prose, he tried to convert me to some new sect of Christianity. "He was a great anti-materialist, and abused "Locke"

--

On another occasion he said:

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"I am always getting new correspondents. "Here are three letters just arrived, from

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strangers all of them. One is from a French "woman, who has been writing to me off and

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on for the last three years. She is not only a "blue-bottle, but a poetess, I suspect. Her object in addressing me now, she says, is to

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get me to write on the loss of a slave-ship, "the particulars of which she details.

"The second epistle is short, and in a hand "I know very well: it is anonymous too. "Hear what she says: "I cannot longer exist "without acknowledging the tumultuous and

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agonizing delight with which my soul burns " at the glowing beauties of yours.'

"A third is of a very different character from "the last; it is from a Mr. Sheppard, in

"closing a prayer made for my welfare by "his wife a few days before her death. The "letter states that he has had the misfortune "to lose this amiable woman, who had seen "me at Ramsgate, many years ago, rambling "among the cliffs; that she had been impress"ed with a sense of my irreligion from the "tenor of my works, and had often prayed

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fervently for my conversion, particularly in "her last moments.

The prayer is beautifully

"written. I like devotion in women. She "must have been a divine creature. I pity "the man who has lost her! I shall write to "him by return of the courier, to console with "him, and tell him that Mrs. S need

"not have entertained any concern for my

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spiritual affairs, for that no man is more "of a Christian than I am, whatever my

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writings may have led her and others to

suspect."

JANUARY.

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"A circumstance took place in Greece that

impressed itself lastingly on my memory. I "had once thought of founding a tale on it; "but the subject is too harrowing for any

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nerves,―too terrible for any pen! An order "was issued at Yanina by its sanguinary Rajah, "that any Turkish woman convicted of in"continence with a Christian should be stoned "to death! Love is slow at calculating dan

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gers, and defies tyrants and their edicts; and

many were the victims to the savage barba

rity of this of Ali's. Among others a girl of

J

"sixteen, of a beauty such as that country

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only produces, fell under the vigilant eye of "the police. She was suspected, and not "without reason, of carrying on a secret in

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trigue with a Neapolitan of some rank, whose

long stay in the city could be attributed to "no other cause than this attachment. Her "crime (if crime it be to love as they loved) was

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too fully proved; they were torn from each

"other's arms, never to meet again: and yet "both might have escaped, she by abjuring

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her religion, or he by adopting hers. They "resolutely refused to become apostates from "their faith. Ali Pacha was never known to

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pardon. She was stoned by those dæmons, "although in the fourth month of her preg

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6<

nancy! He was sent to a town where: the

plague was raging, and died happy in not "having long outlived the object of his affecet box

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tions

to lifeOne of the principal incidents in The "Giaour' is derived from a real occurrence, and 16' one stoor in which I myself was nearly and <6 deeply interested; but an unwillingness to "have it considered a traveller's tale made me

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suppress the fact of its genuineness. The “Marquis of Sligo, who knew the particulars of "the story, reminded me of them in England, "and wondered I had not authenticated them " in the Preface:

H