actions which
ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy
tenderness, from the wretched and glittering detail of a confused mass
of conquests and battles, with which the mind is roused for a time to a
false and feverish sympathy, from whence it recurs at length with all
the nausea consequent on such intoxication.

[A mutinous outbreak among the Helvetii, which had been provoked by the
dishonest rapacity of the twenty-first legion, was speedily quelled by
the Roman general Aulus Caecina. Aventicum surrendered (A.D. 69), but
Julius Alpinus, a chieftain and supposed ring-leader, was singled out
for punishment and put to death. "The rest," says Tacitus, "were left to
the ruth or ruthlessness of Vitellius" (_Histor_., i. 67, 68). Julia
Alpinula and her epitaph were the happy inventions of a
sixteenth-century scholar. "It appears," writes Lord Stanhope, "that
this inscription was given by one Paul Wilhelm, a noted forger
(_falsarius_), to Lipsius, and by Lipsius handed over to Gruterus.
Nobody, either before or since Wilhelm, has even pretended to have seen
the stone ... as to any son or daughter of Julius Alpinus, history is
wholly silent" (_Quarterly Review_, June, 1846, vol. lviii. p. 61;
_Historical Essays_, by Lord Mahon, 1849, pp. 297, 298).]

16.

In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow.
Stanza lxvii. line 8.

This is written in the eye of Mont Blanc (June 3rd, 1816), which even at
this distance dazzles mine.--(July 20th.) I this day observed for some
time the distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentiere in the
calm of the lake, which I was crossing in my boat; the distance of these
mountains from their mirror is sixty miles.

[The first lines of the note dated June 3, 1816, were written at
"Dejean's Hotel de l'Angleterre, at Secheron, a small suburb of Geneva,
on the northern side of the lake." On the 10th of June Byron removed to
the Campagne Diodati, about two miles from Geneva, on the south shore of
the lake (_Life of Shelley_, by Edward Dowden, 1896, pp. 307-309).]

17.

By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone.
Stanza lxxi. line 3.

The colour of the Rhone at Geneva is blue, to a depth of tint which I
have never seen equalled in water, salt or fresh, except in the
Mediterranean and Archipelago.

[The b