Eastern verses--of "Conrad," "The
Giaour," and "Lara"--which, having been admitted into the fertile soil
of his brain, were one day to come forth in all their terrible truth,
though softened down by some of his own personal qualities; and having
gone through, unknown to him, a long process of warm fertilization,
while nursed in _solitary_ reflection. Thus solitude was necessary to
him; and this want, I again repeat, was an intellectual one, and had
nothing to do with melancholy. From Chios Lord Byron went to Athens, a
residence so sad and monotonous at this period, that it was well
calculated to give rather than cure the spleen. But as he had no malady
of this kind, after an excursion into the Morea with Lord Sligo,--a
college friend and companion to whom nothing could be refused,--he
returned to Athens; and here, in order to enjoy his cherished
independence, would not even give himself the distraction of seeing
those lovely young faces he used to admire behind the geraniums at their
windows, and which had charmed him some months before he took up his
abode at the Franciscan convent. There, amid the silence of the
cloister, he could commune freely with his own mind, allow it full
expansion, and revert, at will, from solitary contemplation to the most
varied studies, especially to that he always so much appreciated--the
study of mankind in general.

"Here," he wrote to his mother, "I see and have conversed with French,
Italians, Germans, Danes, Greeks, Turks, Americans, etc.; and, without
losing sight of my own, I can judge of the countries and manners of
others. When I see the superiority of England (which, by-the-by, we are
a great deal mistaken about in many things) I am pleased, and where I
find her inferior, I am at least enlightened. Now, I might have staid,
smoked in your towns, or fogged in your country a century without being
sure of this, and without acquiring any thing more useful or amusing at
home."

And then he adds:--

"I hope, on my return, to lead a quiet, recluse life; but God knows and
does best for us all; at least so they say, and I have nothing to
object, as, on the whole, I have no reason to complain of my lot. I
trust this will find you well, and as happy as one can be; you will, at
least, be pleased to hear I am so."

It was in this admirable frame of mind that he often went from Athens to
Cape Colonna. And amid these ruins, washed by the blue waves of the
AEgean Sea, immortalized by Plato,