d: "I consider all that as _very
respectable_, and, moreover, _enviable_. The aunt is right; I wish I
could love the good fathers and St. Teresa. After all, what does this
devotee of St. Teresa, this friend of the good Jesuit Fathers, want?
Happiness; and she has found it! What else are we seeking for?"

We have already seen elsewhere[153] that Lord Byron never, at any period
of his life, laughed at religion or its _sincere_ votaries, whatever
might be their creed of belief. Provided their errors came from the
heart, they commanded his respect. Dallas himself, in reference to the
skeptical stanzas of his twenty-second year, can not help rendering him
justice.

"I have not noticed," says he, "a spirit of mockery in you; and you have
the little-known art of not wishing that others should be of your
opinion in matters of religious belief. I am less disinterested; I have
the greatest desire, nay, even a great hope, to see you some day believe
as I do." We have seen, also, what Kennedy said of him in Greece[154].
Dr. Millingen bears the same testimony:--

"During the whole of the time that I visited him, I never heard him
utter a single word of contempt for the Christian religion. On the
contrary, he used often to say, that nothing could be more reprehensible
than to turn into ridicule those who believed in it, since in this
strange world it is equally difficult to arrive at knowing what one is
or is not to believe; and since many freethinkers teach doctrines which
are as much beyond the reach of human comprehension as the mysteries of
the revelation itself."

When, by habit of looking at serious things from their absurd and
ridiculous side, he feared he had done the same with regard to some
religious ceremony, he at once hastened to explain himself. Thus he
writes to Moore from Pisa:--

"I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be so;
only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of
view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then. Still, I do
assure you that I am a very good Christian. Whether you believe me in
this, I do not know."

But much as he respected sincere religious feelings, equally did he
detest that hypocrisy which despises in secret the idol it adores in
public. Even at the transition period of what has been called his
skepticism, it was extremely distasteful to him to speak against
religion, to despise and mock even the hollow worship practiced
o