ze, as youth so often does, this sort
of amusement would have been difficult for him, for the fine ladies of
his choice, if once they succeeded in inspiring him with some kind of
tender feeling, fastened themselves upon him in such a passionate way
that his freedom became greatly shackled, and they generally ended by
making the public the confidante of their secret.

Lord Byron had some adventures that brought him annoyance and grief.
They made him fall into low spirits,--a sort of moral apathy and
indifference for every thing. His best friends, and the wisest among
them, thought that the surest way of settling him in England, and
getting him out of the scrapes into which he was being dragged by female
enthusiasm, would be for him to marry, and they advised him to it
pertinaciously. Lord Byron, ever docile to the voice of affection, did
not repel the counsels given, but he made them well understand that he
should marry from reason rather than choice; and the letter he wrote,
when Moore insisted on his choosing a certain beautiful girl of noble
birth,[138] well explains his whole state of mind at this time:--

"I believe," said he, "that you think I have not been quite fair with
that Alpha and Omega of beauty with whom you would willingly have
united me. Had Lady ---- appeared to wish it, I would have gone on, and
very possibly married with the same indifference which has frozen over
the Black Sea of almost all my passions. It is that very indifference
which makes me so uncertain and apparently capricious. It is not
eagerness of new pursuits, but that nothing impresses me _sufficiently_
to fix. I do not feel disgusted, but simply indifferent to almost all
excitements; and the proof of this is that obstacles, the slightest
even, stop me. This can hardly be timidity, for I have done some
imprudent things, too, in my time; and in almost all cases opposition is
a stimulus. In this circumstance it is not; if a straw were in my way I
could not stoop to pick it up. I have sent you this long tirade, because
I would not have you suppose that I have been trifling designedly with
you or others. If you think so, in the name of St. Hubert (the patron of
antlers and hunters) _let me be married out of hand, I don't care to
whom_, so it amuses any body else, and don't interfere with me much in
the daytime."

But that to which Lord Byron most aspired was always to wing his flight
to brighter skies.

"Your climate kills me," he wrote