d if it may or may not be a property.

"My present determination to quit Italy was unlooked for; but I
have explained the reasons in letters to my sister and Douglas
Kinnaird, a week or two ago. My progress will depend upon the snows
of the Tyrol, and the health of my child, who is at present quite
recovered; but I hope to get on well, and am

"Yours ever and truly.

"P.S. Many thanks for your letters, to which you are not to
consider this as an answer, but as an acknowledgment."

* * * * *

The struggle which, at the time of my visit to him, I had found Lord
Byron so well disposed to make towards averting, as far as now lay in
his power, some of the mischievous consequences which, both to the
object of his attachment and himself, were likely to result from their
connection, had been brought, as the foregoing letters show, to a crisis
soon after I left him. The Count Guiccioli, on his arrival at Venice,
insisted, as we have seen, that his lady should return with him; and,
after some conjugal negotiations, in which Lord Byron does not appear to
have interfered, the young Contessa consented reluctantly to accompany
her lord to Ravenna, it being first covenanted that, in future, all
communication between her and her lover should cease.

"In a few days after this," says Mr. Hoppner, in some notices of his
noble friend with which he has favoured me, "he returned to Venice, very
much out of spirits, owing to Madame Guiccioli's departure, and out of
humour with every body and every thing around him. We resumed our rides
at the Lido; and I did my best not only to raise his spirits, but to
make him forget his absent mistress, and to keep him to his purpose of
returning to England. He went into no society; and having no longer any
relish for his former occupation, his time, when he was not writing,
hung heavy enough on hand."

The promise given by the lovers not to correspond was, as all parties
must have foreseen, soon violated; and the letters Lord Byron addressed
to the lady, at this time, though written in a language not his own, are
rendered frequently even eloquent by the mere force of the feeling that
governed him--a feeling which could not have owed its fuel to fancy
alone, since now that reality had been so long substituted, it still
burned on. From one of these letters, dated November 25th, I shall so
far presume upon the discretionary power v