een
made with my creditors." From this visit her Ladyship never
returned; a separation took place; but too much has been said to the
world respecting it, and I have no taste for the subject. Whatever
was the immediate cause, the event itself was not of so rare a kind
as to deserve that the attention of the public should be indelicately
courted to it.

Beyond all question, however, Lord Byron's notions of connubial
obligations were rather philosophical. "There are," said he to
Captain Parry, "so many undefinable and nameless, and not to be
named, causes of dislike, aversion, and disgust in the matrimonial
state, that it is always impossible for the public, or the friends of
the parties, to judge between man and wife. Theirs is a relation
about which nobody but themselves can form a correct idea, or have
any right to speak. As long as neither party commits gross injustice
towards the other; as long as neither the woman nor the man is guilty
of any offence which is injurious to the community; as long as the
husband provides for his offspring, and secures the public against
the dangers arising from their neglected education, or from the
charge of supporting them; by what right does it censure him for
ceasing to dwell under the same roof with a woman, who is to him,
because he knows her, while others do not, an object of loathing?
Can anything be more monstrous, than for the public voice to compel
individuals who dislike each other to continue their cohabitation?
This is at least the effect of its interfering with a relationship,
of which it has no possible means of judging. It does not indeed
drag a man to a woman's bed by physical force, but it does exert a
moral force continually and effectively to accomplish the same
purpose. Nobody can escape this force, but those who are too high or
those who are too low for public opinion to reach; or those
hypocrites who are, before others, the loudest in their approbation
of the empty and unmeaning forms of society, that they may securely
indulge all their propensities in secret."

In the course of the conversation, in which he is represented to have
stated these opinions, he added what I have pleasure in quoting,
because the sentiments are generous in respect to his wife, and
strikingly characteristic of himself:--

"Lady Byron has a liberal mind, particularly as to religious
opinions: and I wish when I married her that I had possessed the
same command over myself that