"What!" said he, " after having lost the five best years of our lives?-Never! But," added he, "it was no fault of mine that we quarrelled. I have made advances enough. I had once an idea that people are happiest in the marriage state, after the impetuosity of the passions has subsided-but that hope is all over with me!"

Writing to a friend the day after our party, I finished my letter with the following remark :

"Notwithstanding the tone of raillery with which he sometimes speaks in Don Juan' of his separation from Lady Byron, and his saying, as he did to-day, that the only thing he thanks Lady Byron for is, that he cannot marry, &c., it is evident that it is the thorn in his side-the poison in his cup of life! The veil is easily seen through. He endeavours to mask his griefs, and to fill up the void of his heart, by assuming a gaiety that does not belong to it. All the tender and endearing ties of social and domestic life rudely torn asunder, he has been wandering on from place to place, without finding any to rest in. Switzerland, Venice, Ravenna, and I might even have added Tuscany, were doomed to be no asylum for fiim." &c.

I observed himself and all his servants in deep mourning. He did not wait for me to inquire the

cause.

of the oil: he is never satisfied with what he does his finest things have been spoiled by over-polishthe sharpness of the outline is worn off. Like paintings, poems may be too highly finished. The greaf art is effect, no matter how produced.

"I will show ode have never seen, that you an you I consider little inferior to the best which the present prolific age has brought forth." With this he left the table, almost before the cloth was removed, and returned with a magazine, from which he read the following lines on Sir John Moore's burial, which pers haps require no apology for finding a place here;

4 Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
"As his corse to the ramparts we hurried;
"Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
"O'er the grave where our hero we buried,

"We buried him darkly at dead of night,
"The sods with our bayonets turning,--
"By the strugling moonbeam's misty light
"And the lantern dimly burning.

"No useless coffin confined his breast,
" Nor in sheet nor in shroud we bound him
"But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
"With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
"And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

"But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
"And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

"We thought, as we heap'd his narrow bed,

« And smooth'd down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head "And we far away on the billow!

"Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
"And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;

"But nothing he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
"In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

"But half of our heavy task was done,
"When the clock told the hour for retiring;
"And we heard by the distant and random gun
"That the foe was suddenly firing.

"Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

"From the field of his fame fresh and gory;

"We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
"But we left him alone, with his glory."

The feeling with which he recited these admirable stanzas I shall never forget.

After he had come to

an end, he repeated the third, and said it was perfect particularly the lines

"But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
"With his martial cloak around him."

"I should have taken," said Shelley," the whole for a rough sketch of Campbell's."

"No," replied Lord Byron: Campbell would have claimed it, if it had been his."

1 afterwards had reason to think that the ode was Lord Byron's;* that he was piqued at none of his own being mentioned; and, after he had praised the verses so highly, could not own them. No other reason can be assigned for his not acknowledging him

* I am corroborated in this opinion lately by a lady, whose Brother received them many years ago from Lord Byron, in his Lordship's own hand-writing.

self the author, particularly as he was a great admi rer of General Moore.

Talking after dinner of swimming, he said

"Murray published a letter I wrote to him from Venice, which might have seemed an idle display of vanity; but the object of my writing it was to contradict what Turner had asserted about the impossibility of crossing the Hellespont from the Abydos to the Sestos side, in consequence of the tide.

"One is as easy as the other; we did both." Here he turned round to Fletcher, to whom he occasionally referred, and said, "Fletcher, how far was it Mr. Ekenhead and I swam ?" Fletcher replied, "Three miles and a half, my Lord." (Of course he did not diminish the distance.) "The real width of the Hellespont," resumed Lord Byron, "is not much above a mile; but the current is prodigiously strong, and we were carried down notwithstanding all our efforts. I don't know how Leander contrived to stem the stream, and steer straight across; but nothing is impossible in love or religion. If I had had a Hero on the other side, perhaps I should have worked harder. We were to have undertaken this feat some time before, but put it off in consequence of the coldness of the water; and it was chilly enough when we performed it. I know I should have made a bad Leander, for it gave me an ague that I did not so easily get rid of. There were some sailors in the fleet who swam further than I did-1 do not say than I could

have done, for it is the only exercise I pride myself upon, being almost amphibious.

"I remember being at Brighton many years ago, and having great difficulty in making the land,-the wind blowing off the shore, and the tide setting out: Crowds of people were collected on the beach to see us. Mr. (I think he said Hobhouse) was with me; and," he added, "I had great difficulty in saving him he nearly drowned me.

"When I was at Venice, there was an Italian who knew no more of swimming than a camel, but he had heard of my prowess in the Dardanelles, and challenged me. Not wishing that any foreigner at least should beat me at my own arms, I consented to engage in the contest. Alexander Scott proposed to be of the party, and we started from Lido. Our landlubber was very soon in the rear, and Scott saw him make for a Gondola. He rested himself first against one, and then against another, and gave in before we got half way to St. Mark's Place. We saw no more of him, but continued our course through the Grand Canal, landing at my palace-stairs. The water of the Lagunes is dull, and not very clear or agreeable to bathe in. I can keep myself up for hours in the sea: I delight in it, and come out with a buoyancy of spirits I never feel on any other occasion.

"If I believed in the transmigration of your Hindoos, I should think I had been a Merman in some former state of existence, or was going to be turned into one in the next."

"When I published Marino Faliero,' I had not