t popularity, and his mind
being soothed by friendship even more than by fame, he entered into the
fashionable society in which his rank entitled him to move.

He frequented the world very much at this period, cultivating it
assiduously. A moment even came when he seemed to be completely absorbed
by gayety. Sometimes going to as many as fourteen assemblies, balls,
etc., in one evening. "He acknowledged to me," says Dallas, "that it
amused him." Did not his genius suffer then from the new infatuation? So
courted, flattered, and surrounded by temptations, did not this worldly
life prove too seductive, hurtful to his mind, heart, and independence
of character? Did he draw from the world's votaries his rules of
judgment, his ways of thought? Did he yield when brought in contact with
that terrible _English law of opinion_? No; Lord Byron was safe from all
such dangers. Amid the vortex in which he allowed himself to be whirled
along, his mind was never idle. In the drawing-rooms he frequented, his
intellectual curiosity found field for exercise. Though so young, he had
already reflected much on human nature in general; but he still required
to study individuals. It was in society that his extraordinary
penetration could find out true character, discover the reality lurking
under a borrowed mask. The great world formed an excellent school to
discipline his mind. There he found subjects for observation that he
afterward put in order, and brought to maturity in retirement.

"Wherever he went," says Moore, "Lord Byron found field for observation
and study. To a mind with a glance so deep, lively, and varied, every
place, and every occupation, presented some view of interest; and,
whether he were at a ball, in the boxing-school, or the senate, a genius
like his turned every thing to advantage."

And if _salons_ in general were powerless to exercise any bad influence
over him, this impossibility was still greater with regard to London
_salons_. Without adopting as exact the picture drawn of them by a
learned academician,[120] in a book more witty than true, wherein we
read:--"that under pain of passing for eccentric, of giving scandal or
exciting alarm, English people are forbidden to speak of others or
themselves, of politics, religion, or intellectual things or matters of
taste; but only of the environs, the roundabouts, a picnic, a visit to
some ruin, a fashionable preacher, a fox-hunt, and the rain,--that
never-ending theme k