er cantos, in which Juan is whirled through the vortex of the
fashionable life which Byron knew so well, loved so much, and at last
esteemed so little. There is no richer piece of descriptive writing in his
works than that of Newstead (in c. xiii.); nor is there any analysis of
female character so subtle as that of the Lady Adeline. Conjectures as to
the originals of imaginary portraits, are generally futile; but Miss
Millpond--not Donna Inez--is obviously Lady Byron; in Adeline we may
suspect that at Genoa he was drawing from the life in the Villa Paradiso;
while Aurora Raby seems to be an idealization of La Guiccioli:--

Early in years, and yet more infantine
In figure, she had something of sublime
In eyes, which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine:
All youth--but with an aspect beyond time;
Radiant and grave--us pitying man's decline;
Mournful--but mournful of another's crime,
She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door,
And grieved for those who could return no more.

She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere,
As far as her own gentle heart allow'd,
And deem'd that fallen worship far more dear,
Perhaps, because 'twas fallen: her sires were proud
Of deeds and days, when they had fill'd the ear
Of nations, and had never bent or bow'd
To novel power; and, as she was the last,
She held her old faith and old feelings fast.

She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew,
As seeking not to know it; silent, lone,
As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew,
And kept her heart serene within its zone.

Constantly, towards the close of the work, there is an echo of home and
country, a half involuntary cry after--

The love of higher things and better days;
Th'unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance
Of what is call'd the world and the world's ways.

In the concluding stanza of the last completed canto, beginning--

Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
'Twixt night and morn, on the horizon's verge--

we have a condensation of the refrain of the poet's philosophy; but the
main drift of the later books is a satire on London society. There are
elements in a great city which may be wrought into something nobler than
satire, for all the energies of the age are concentrated where passion is
fiercest and thought intensest, amid the myriad sights and sounds of its
glare and gloom. But those scenes, and the actors in them, are apt also to
induce the frame of mind i