additional violence to the angry and inquisitorial feelings then abroad against him; advertised as they were by various publishers, as " Poems by Lord Byron, on his domestic circumstances." Mr Moore says, "It is indeed only in those emotions and passions, of which imagination forms a predominant ingredient-such as love in its first dreams, before reality has come to embody or dispel them, or sorrow, in its wane, when begin ning to pass away from the heart into the fancy-that poetry ought ever to be employed as an interpreter of feeling. For the expression of all those immediate affections and disquietudes that have their root in the actual realities of life, the art of the poet, from the very circumstance of its being an art, as well as from the coloured form in which it is accustomed to transmit impression, cannot be otherwise than a medium as false as it is feeble." Beautifully said, indeed, and also truly ; but it is a truth not so comprehensive as Mr Moore imagines. The laws of passion are not uniform. In one man grief is mute as the moss, and hard as the stone. Strike it with a sledge-hammer, and it may dully and sullenly ring-but break it shall not-nay, nor yield a single splinter. Grief in another man is like a pound of butter-and he would be a poor pugilist who could not make a "dent in it." So on-begging Mr Moore's pardon, who, after all, we verily believe, knows as much, or more about these self-same passions, and every thing else, than we do-old as we are-so on, we say, throughout the whole range of nature. What is as natural in one man in agony as it is natural for the leaves to look for the light, is as unnatural in another man in the same agony, as it would be for a Bishop to walk up the steps of his throne in a cathedral, on his head or bottom, like Joe Grimaldi. Now, in poetry-and it is of poetry that we speak-that which is natural is necessarily proper; and a poem written on the rack, or the wheel-if the author succeeded in not only giving vent, but permanent and adequate expression to his feelings, could not fail of becoming a great and just favourite with the pensive and impassioned public. Now, to come to the point at once-and keep to it-Lord

Byron's Farewell to Lady Byronwas poetry-full of pathos and passion-deny it who will-and we know now that it was poured forth from his soul in throes-with sobs and tears that literally-not figuratively -wet the paper. It could not have been the nature of many men to act thus, while thus they suffered; but it was the nature of Byron to do so, and that is enough-our argument meets Mr Moore's, and being stronger, in the collision it sends it spinning aside-but Mr Moore's argument being, nevertheless, sound within the heart-though with too strong a bias to the right-it lies like a well-played bowl in the neighbourhood of a better-and 'tis known all over the green that he has lost the game-and that Christopher is, as usual, in a match-conqueror.

Now, some dozen years ago, a parallel between Byron and Rousseau was drawn in the Edinburgh Review, in an article on the 4th Canto of Childe Harold, by Professor Wilson. We have no very distinct recollection of it--how should we?but there can be no doubt that in not a few points-and these distinctive

there is a resemblance-strange and also deep-between their characters. Byron denied it—but what signified his denial? Did he prove that it was a mere dream? No. He liked boxing-Rousseau did notargal, he was not like Rousseau! That is his strongest argument. But Jack Scroggins is fonder of boxingand better at it too, than ever Byron was therefore liker Byron than Jean Jacques! Byron's mother thought him like Rousseau. What her idea of Rousseau was, God knows; yet she was much such another woman as Rousseau's wife. But many others have seen the dim analogy-the world sees it-and will continue to see it till doomsday. And Mr Moore must acknowledge it strongly subsists, if he will but put his hand to his forehead, and think over some sayings and doings, especially the "Fare Thee Well," of his poor friend-aye, poor as any beggar that ever lived on alms, though richer than either Croesus or Rothschild.

No sooner were the rumours of Lady Byron's secession from her Lord known to be true, than the Pu

lic fell into a "fit of moral wrath," and with "her eyes in a fine frenzy rolling," proclaimed against her whilom idol an edict of excommunication, her anathema and curse. That such wickedness could be in this world-beneath the sun, moon, and stars-surpassed not only all her experience, but all her imagination; and looking down on Byron's feet, she saw the foul Fiend-the Prince of the Air-the tutelary genius of Lincoln. Here was, indeed, the devil to pay-while holy men, who knew professionally that it was not Satan, hinted from pulpits prophetic fears for the island that had given birth to

such a monster.

"What is his crime ?" "Hushhush!" was the answer-with finger laid on the lip-eyelids dropped and head moving-as if something had happened that must bring on the judgment-day. But "what is his crime?" "Crime! for Heaven's sake, silence! We live in strange times-but bad as human nature is, we were not prepared for this!" "For what?" "Hush, hush-shocking, hideous, revolting, unnatural! Take care, my good sir, how you commit your own character." This last view of the subject generally proved conclusive-for a man's cha racter is a selfish, a sacred thing and the Child of Sin was given over to perdition.

Many there were, as Mr Moore well says, 66 who conscientiously believed, and reprobated what they had but too much right to consider credible excesses, whether viewing Byron as a Poet or a Man of Fashion." The Moral Sense of the country was shocked by what must have seemed, under the unknown, but conjectured circumstances of the case, cruelty to a young, beautiful, loving, and virtuous wife. But the Moral Sense of a country is, we presume, its Moral Understanding; and it pronounces not final judgment till it knows the truth. Then it speaks, unfalteringly, exculpation, acquittal, or doom. It hates mystery, and above all, that mystery in which malice would seek to involve vice, evil, or crime, that the criminal may be unable to offer any palliation of his offences which seem more hideous through the gloom. The Moral Sense or Understanding of the country, there

fore, as soon as it recovered from its first shock of alarm, began to enquire-to demand explanationnot from the guilty, who might be too obstinate, too sullen, too reckless, too infatuated, to confess-but from the innocent, who might reasonably be supposed anxious even-not in her own vindication, for she possibly needed none-but in vindication of her unhappy husband, who, though perhaps a bad man, was yet a man and not a demon--to say this much, that there was no peculiar enormity in his breach of the marriage vow, no especial wickedness that ought to lay him under the ban of nature. But a profound silence was preserved-“ under the repeated demands made for a specification of her charges against him, which left to malice and imagination, the fullest range for their combined industry." Lies too loathsome to be alluded to without horror, alternated with others too ludicrous to be listened to with a grave face-till sensible people-of whom there are always a few in the world, began to suspect a conspiracy-and the Public herself to be half-ashamed of the virulence of her moral indignation against one offender, while hundreds and thousands as bad, or worse, continued to sit on the high places of her esteem, and even to wave over her their unchallenged sceptres.

But in London-and London had been too much his world-such an outcry was raised and continued against Lord Byron, as never before, perhaps, was witnessed in private life. "The whole amount of fame which he had gathered, in the course of the last four years," says Mr Moore, "did not much exceed in proportion the reproach and obloquy that were now, within the space of a few weeks, showered upon him. There were actively on the alert that large class of persons, who seem to hold violence against the vices of others to be equivalent to virtue in themselves, together with all those natural haters of success, who, having long writhed under the splendours of the Poet, were now able, in the guise of champions for innocence, to wreak their spite on the Man. In every various form of paragraph, pamphlet, and caricature, both his character and his person were held

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up to odium; hardly a voice was raised, or at least listened to, in his behalf; and though a few faithful friends remained unshaken by his side, the utter hopelessness of stemming the torrent was felt as well by them as by himself; and after an effort or two to gain a fair hearing, they submitted in silence," which they ought not to have done, but fought with tongue and pen to the last. There is something very affecting in the following appeal to Mr Rogers: "You are one of the few persons with whom I have lived in what is called intimacy, and have heard me, at different times, conversing on the untoward topic of my recent family disquietudes-Will you have the goodness to say, whether you ever heard me speak of her with disrespect, with unkindness, or defending myself at her expense by any serious imputation against her? Did you ever hear me say, that when there was a right or a wrong, she had the right? The reason I put these questions to you, or others of my friends, is, because I am said by her and hers to have resorted to such means of exculpation." In those Memoirs of Byron, which it was thought right to destroy, he gave a detailed account of all the circumstances connected with his marriage, from his first proposal to the lady, till his own departure, after the breach, from England. And Mr Moore says, that "frank, as usual, throughout, in his avowal of his own errors, and generously just towards her who was his fellow-sufferer in the strife, the impression his recital left on the minds of all who perused it, was, to say the least, favourable to him; though, upon the whole, leading to a persuasion that neither in kind or degree, did the causes of disunion between the parties much differ from those that loosen the links of most such marriages."

London-the Pure-the Immaculate the Vestal London-recoiled from the pollution of Byron's touch, as from that of a lewd and loathsome Lazar. There was then on the stage a beautiful actress of the name of Mardyn, with whom Byron, it was said, had had an intrigue. This amour struck all London with horror-till she groaned so loud that you might have heard her groans at night above the yells of the hundred

VOL. XXVII. NO. CLXIV.

thousand prostitutes that people her public streets. The charge was false a mere foundationless lie-and when the beautiful actress advanced to the lamps, and appealed for protection to her character to the manliness of Englishmen-Ye Gods! how Old Drury thundered through her highest heaven! But, though these manly Englishmen and Englishwomen pronounced "The Mardyn". pure, they still held Byron fouler than ever. Had he not fired off pistols over his wife's head, as it lay on the pillow of their post-nuptial morn

and as the smoke broke away, had he not, with the face of a fiend, whispered into her ear, delicately veiled in a lace night-cap, that he had married her from revenge, and would break her heart?" To so very low an ebb had the industry of his assailants now succeeded in reducing his private character, that it required no small degree of courage, even among the class who are supposed to be the most tolerant of domestic irregularities, to invite him to their society !" And these were the Miserables, who, a year before, had all gathered round him, wherever he shewed his "fulgent head"-by gape or gambol had striven, pig or ape-like, to attract one momentary look of his proud condescending eye-had been fain to sweep the floor with their foreheads before his feet-and who lived as Literary Men on the Town, on the amous of one single oral or written word from lip or pen of the glorious Childe,who always pitied and relieved poverty, without heeding whether it had been brought upon its victims by misfortune or guilt.

Byron must now have seen clearly what he must all along have dimly suspected-the utter worthlessness of the idol-worship, which constituted the religion of the fashionable London mob. They had for some considerable time back been doubting the omnipotence of his genius-and shewing themselves anxious to escape from heresy into a more orthodox creed. Their shallow souls had run dryand the stony channels could no more be made to murmur "with a music sweeter than their own," by all the waters of Helicon. Wearied of their own wonder and admiration, which had now got stale, and incapable, in their weak minds, of any self-sustaining emotion, they no long 2 G

believed in the perpetual miracle of their chosen poet's power, but began to pass over, by a line of no very difficult transition, from senseless and superstitious astonishment to critical and philosophical con tempt. His compositions were certainly full of passion, but not of poetry; genius he undoubtedly had, but 'twas monotonous and circumscribed; he was not formed by nature for great and steady, but for bright and startling achievements; and it was obvious that he had already-in the summer-fervour of youth-done his best!! All this, and more than all this, was whispered or whined, moaned or muttered; and it was a relief from any doubts that might beset the minds of such empty and shallow detractors, to turn tooth-andnail to the tearing into pieces of Byron's private character or rather public personal character; for to his sad loss and misfortune, he never could be said to have had a private character since he went upon the town. His friends deserted himthat cannot be denied; for had they acted boldly, and in a phalanx, they must have speedily borne down the bands of calumny and hypocrisy, which are always as cowardly as they are badly disciplined,—an awkward squad, which cannot perform the simplest evolution, without hurting their heels and losing their heads in inextricable disarray. But Byron had for friends but a small number indeed of "good men and true;" and of them, with lamentably few exceptions, it may be said,

"As he drifted on his path,
There was silence deep as death,
And the boldest held his breath
For a time."

We have dwelt energetically on this passage in the Life of Byron, because for a long time it was thought to be the darkest of all its passages, and one that had affixed an ineñaceable stain or stigma to his name. There is a mystery about it still; but a mystery so far from appalling, that it merely excites that very humble feeling, Curiosity; and when the Separation is talked of, apart from its unhappy results, people begin to gossip and to smile. Lady Byron, on the forenoon of her departure, left her lord in possession of a few tender conjugal endearments, began a loveletter to him from the first stage

"My dear Duck"-and having reached home-in time we hope for dinner ere it cooled-dispatched an epistle declaratory of her resolution never again to meet him till the Day of Judgment. That was odd, even among the odd things constantly occurring in this odd world. No wonder, after surprise and sorrow had subsided, that anger and scorn took their place in Byron's heart. 'Twas treatment that would have teased a tailor into a traitor to humanity. 'Twou'd have made a Timon of the author of the "Age, a Poem." Byron's future life must be judged in the light of this inexplicable desertion. That life was in many things altogether indefensible; but let not its guilt darken the virtues of his character at a previous period of his "manycoloured" being; let each answer for its own sins. When a calumny has rested for years on a man's character, all its virtues seem to our eyes poor and sickly under the influence of that unjustly-imputed guilt, like the flowering shrubs in some spot of shady ground from which the sun's glad beams have been intercepted; but, in the latter case, the pining away is real; in the former, it only seems so to our jaundiced eyes; unless, indeed, which generally happens-though from different causes, to the humble as well as to the high, the meek as well as the proud-a scornful sense of injustice withers or blights the better feelings of their nature, and in process of time makes them at last, in very truth, the wicked and unhappy beings which calumny at first called them in the bitterness of conscious falsehood.

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We have much more to say about Byron-but we shall keep it to ourselves till the publication of Mr Moore's second volume.-How must a

Christian-judging as a Christian speak of Byron's character and conduct from first to last-from the day he beat the boy in Aberdeenfor sake of an old grudge-and in verification of his motto, Trust Byron"-to the hour when he breathed his last in Greece,

"Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata

sub umbras"?

That is a solemn-an awful question! and, if it must be answered in the case of Byron, let it be put and answered in the cases of all other poets-living and dead,

UNDOUBTEDLY, Mr Canning, in his celebrated letter to Mr Gallatin, the American minister, placed the Colonial Question upon its proper basis. The attempt, on the part of the American Government, to have the colonies considered in the light of portions of the United Kingdom, and to claim the same privileges in trading to the West Indies, that they enjoyed by treaty in the ports of this country, was dextrously conceived. It was, however, as clearly seen through,—indeed, it was impossible to put forward the pretension with out, at the same time, suggesting the recollection of the fact, that the colonies have, from the date of their plantation, been indebted to the mother-country, and that all the produce which they remit to her, is but in payment of the interest of the debt, or in reduction of the debt itself. To have opened, therefore, the trade with them without an equivalent to indemnify the mother-country for the risk she run of that remittance going into other channels, would have been inexpedient, and most unwise. At least, this is the view which many have taken of the subject, and it is not unsound. For if the West India trade be so desirable to the Americans, surely it is worth their while to pay for the use of the privilege.

But another tale besides this hangs to the question, and of far more importance to the general interests of the empire than the value of any equivalent in the power, or likely to be long in the power of the United States, to give. We shall not raise any argument on this head, but simply state two facts.

The first is, that the United States, within their own territories, are rapidly cultivating all sorts of West Indian productions; and probably not many years will elapse until they have an abundance of every thing within themselves, which at present they require from the West Indies. The "boon," therefore, which may be granted to them, under existing circumstances, will assuredly be no longer considered as such, than until the period we anticipate arrive.

The second fact is,-that the question, as now stated by the American Government, with reference to some concession which may be made in their tariff, is one in which the West India interest has very little concern. It is a question that much more afects the manufacturing interests at home, and we must be insensible to the relative condition in which our manufactures stand with those of the United States, if we can flatter ourselves that any advantage which may be obtained by an alteration in their tariff, will be otherwise than temporary. It will not be felt longer in Glasgow and Manchester, and their neighbours, than until the Floridas, Louisiana, and the other southern states, are able to undersell the importers from the West Indies in the American markets, for about that time their own manufacturers will be able to supply all their wants.

Under this impression, we should regret exceedingly to see any treaty framed on the principle of equivalents, with reference to the tariff.

It may be said, that as every treaty which can be formed with relation to the Colonial Question, must, of necessity, be temporary, seeing that, sooner or later, the Americans will be independent of us, both as to manufactures and West Indian produce, the matter at issue is really but of minor importance. This is not, however, a just estimate. For, by opening the West India trade to the Americans, we open a competition against our own North American colonies.

Under the existing state of things, these colonies can supply the West Indies with every thing they would take from the United States; and to bring a competition against them, would be to inflict permanent damage on a great and growing interest of our own, without any advantage to the West India interest. And for what? Some transient advantage which our manufacturers might derive from a modification of the American tariff.

We are therefore persuaded that our proper way of viewing the Colonial Question, now in negociation