the wit and colour and
power served to make an anti-social and licentious sentiment attractive
to puny creatures, who were thankful to have their lasciviousness so
gaily adorned. As for Great Britain, she deserved _Don Juan_. A nation,
whose disrespect for all ideas and aspirations that cannot be supported
by a text, nor circulated by a religious tract society, was systematic,
and where consequently the understanding is least protected against
sensual sophisms, received no more than a just chastisement in 'the
literature of Satan.' Here again, in the licence of this literature, we
see the finger of the Revolution, and of that egoism which makes the
passions of the individual his own law. Let us condemn and pass on,
homily undelivered. If Byron injured the domestic idea on this side, let
us not fail to observe how vastly he elevated it on others, and how,
above all, he pointed to the idea above and beyond it, in whose light
only can that be worthy, the idea of a country and a public cause. A man
may be sure that the comfort of the hearth has usurped too high a place,
when he can read without response the lines declaring that domestic ties
must yield in 'those who are called to the highest destinies, which
purify corrupted commonwealths.'

We must forget all feelings save the one--
We must resign all passions save our purpose--
We must behold no object save our country--
And only look on death as beautiful,
So that the sacrifice ascend to heaven
And draw down freedom on her evermore.
_Calendaro._ But if we fail----
_I. Bertuccio._ They never fail who die
In a great cause: the block may soak their gore;
Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls--
But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years
Elapse, and others share as dark a doom,
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others, and conduct
The world at last to freedom. What were we
If Brutus had not lived? He died in giving
Rome liberty, but left a deathless lesson--
A name which is a virtue, and a soul
Which multiplies itself throughout all time,
When wicked men wax mighty, and a state
Turns servile.

And the man who wrote this was worthy to play an even nobler part than
the one he had thus nobly described; for it was not many years after,
that Byron left all and laid down his life for the emancipation of a
strange land, an