THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI.

"THE world," says an acute writer of the present day, "is very lenient to the mistresses of poets;" and, perhaps, not without justice, for their attachments have something of excuse, not only in their object, but their origin, and arise from imagination, not depravity. If ever such an attachment could be furnished with an excuse, it must exist in the case of Lord Byron and the Countess Guiccioli, where no domestic affection was severed on his lordship's side, and where, on the part of the lady, the lax morality of the South had rendered a favoured lover no disgrace to a married woman.

Young, noble, handsome and ardent, and with the halo of genius round his brow,—in a climate sacred to poetry, where that genius would receive its full amount of homage, — where is the woman's heart that could have resisted this " group of bright ideas," this galaxy of attraction? Let our countrywomen consider this ere they judge too severely the fair subject of the accompanying engraving. Let them consider also, that no wound was inflicted, either on the affection, or the honour of a husband, who continued to seek the society of Lord Byron, even when he was aware of his attachment to his wife, and who was willing to leave the lovers in tranquillity, provided the sum of £1000, then in the hands of Lord Byron's banker at Ravenna, were paid into his own.

This engraved likeness was taken from a miniature, painted from the Countess at the age of eighteen, and which, at that period, was considered extremely like. Some alteration in the disposition of the drapery was necessary to suit the taste of the English public, but the likeness has been carefully preserved.