nts. Neither is any great danger to be apprehended from
the sanction or seduction of such an example; as they who would dare to
plead the authority of Lord Byron for their errors must first be able to
trace them to the same palliating sources,--to that sensibility, whose
very excesses showed its strength and depth,--that stretch of
imagination, to the very verge, perhaps, of what reason can bear without
giving way,--that whole combination, in short, of grand but disturbing
powers, which alone could be allowed to extenuate such moral
derangement, but which, even in him thus dangerously gifted, were
insufficient to excuse it.

Having premised these few observations, I shall now proceed, with less
interruption, to lay his correspondence, during this and the two
succeeding years, before the reader:--

LETTER 252. TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, November 17. 1816.

"I wrote to you from Verona the other day in my progress hither,
which letter I hope you will receive. Some three years ago, or it
may be more, I recollect your telling me that you had received a
letter from our friend Sam, dated 'On board his gondola.' _My_
gondola is, at this present, waiting for me on the canal; but I
prefer writing to you in the house, it being autumn--and rather an
English autumn than otherwise. It is my intention to remain at
Venice during the winter, probably, as it has always been (next to
the East) the greenest island of my imagination. It has not
disappointed me; though its evident decay would, perhaps, have that
effect upon others. But I have been familiar with ruins too long to
dislike desolation. Besides, I have fallen in love, which, next to
falling into the canal, (which would be of no use, as I can swim,)
is the best or the worst thing I could do. I have got some
extremely good apartments in the house of a 'Merchant of Venice,'
who is a good deal occupied with business, and has a wife in her
twenty-second year. Marianna (that is her name) is in her
appearance altogether like an antelope. She has the large, black,
oriental eyes, with that peculiar expression in them which is seen
rarely among _Europeans_--even the Italians--and which many of the
Turkish women give themselves by tinging the eyelid,--an art not
known out of that country, I believe. This expression she has
_naturally_,--and something more than this. In sh