ots, of ephemeral growth, and most natural
to a fine nature. We feel, notwithstanding all these real palpable
causes of ennui, that his principal sufferings still came from the
heart.

"Lady Melbourne," writes Lord Byron in his memoranda, in 1814, "tells me
that it is said that I am 'much out of spirits.' I wonder if I am really
or not? I have certainly enough of _'that perilous stuff which weighs
upon the heart' and it is better they should believe it to be the result
of these attacks than that they should guess the real cause_."

And this real cause was a grief he wished to keep secret. Separation
from friends, their departure, even when he was to meet them again,
likewise caused him sadness. Especially was this the case with regard to
Moore, whom he loved so much, and whose society had an unspeakable charm
for him:--"I can only repeat," he said, "that I wish you would either
remain a long time with us, or not come at all, for these snatches of
society make the subsequent separations bitterer than ever."[181]

And in the next letter he says:--"I could be very sentimental now, but I
won't. The truth is, that I have been all my life trying to harden my
heart, and have not yet quite succeeded--though there are great
hopes--and you do not know how it sunk with your departure."

This influence is ever visible. The English climate was always
distasteful to him, and its fogs displeased him more since he had
revelled in the splendor of Eastern suns; moreover, mists grew darker
and colder when his imagination was still more influenced by his heart.
At those moments his first thought ever was--"_Let me depart, let me
seek a bright sun, a blue sky._" When to his great regret, the East was
closed against him by the plague of 1813, in his disdain for northern
countries, he exclaimed:--

"Give me a _sun_, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool,
and my heaven is as easily made as your Persian's." Making allusions to
this verse--

"_A Persian's heaven is_ easily made,--
_'Tis but black eyes and lemonade_."

But we know that he was thinking of this voyage, in order to divert his
mind from the regret of having been obliged, from motives of honor and
prudence, to give up accompanying into Sicily a family he liked very
much. However, the sight of a camel sufficed to carry him back to Asia
and the Euxine Sea, and to make him cry out: "_Quando te aspiciam!_"

It was also at this time that he wrote to Moore, "All