ble aspirations in his youth
To make his mind the mind of other men,
The enlightener of nations, and to rise
He know not whither, it might be to fall,
But fall, even as the mountain-cataract,
Which, having leapt from its more dazzling height,
Lies low, but mighty still."

In Byron's day, Matlock was a fashionable watering-place; and the
drawing-room of the "Old Bath," with cut-glass chandeliers, old
engravings, and cushioned window-seats, looks much the same as when it
witnessed many a gay assembly. In this room the wayward and sensitive
youth, secretly writhing with mortification at being prevented by
lameness from leading Mary Chaworth to the dance, watched, her more
fortunate partners with moody envy. The young Lady of Annesley little
imagined that the lame boy, with his handsome face and troublesome
temper, would link her name to deathless song.

On a fair, sunny morning, towards the close of October, we left Matlock
for Annesley Hall and Newstead Abbey. The day was in harmony with the
poetical associations of our excursion: a gentle mist hung like a veil
over hills and groves, giving a dreamy aspect to Nature, and rendering
the places we intended to visit creations of fancy rather than actual
facts. Very unromantic personages, however, answered our inquiries for
Annesley, which reassured us of its reality. Byron's "Dream" had
rendered the scenery familiar to our memory.

"The hill
Green and of mild declivity, the last,
As 't were the cape, of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape."

Our approach led us beside those gentle slopes, and we seemed to see the
maiden and the youth standing on the mild declivity, with its crowning
circlet of trees.

"And both were young, but not alike in youth:
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers.

"... She was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts.
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother, but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him,
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honored race.

"Even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar, if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy and flew."

That lover, soon after,