ory. A smile still sometimes wreathed his lip; but, when the gayety
natural to his age and disposition would fain have taken possession of
his heart, the remembrance of all the indignities he had undergone, rose
up before him as the words _Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin_, did to
_Belshazzar_. And often his fit of gayety ended in a sigh, which even
became habitual after it had ceased to express sorrow. All those who
knew Lord Byron have remarked _this singular and touching sigh_,
attributing it to a melancholy temperament. But it was especially
produced by a crowd of painful indistinct remembrances, intruding upon
him at some moment when he would and could have been happy. So he has
told us in those exquisite lines of his fourth canto of "Childe Harold;"
and he often repeated the same in prose. Thus, for instance, at the time
of his excursions to Mont Blanc and the Glaciers, which, had his heart
been lighter, would have made him so happy, he finished his memoranda
with these melancholy words:--

"In the weather for this tour (of thirteen days) I have been very
fortunate--fortunate in a companion (Hobhouse), fortunate in our
prospects, and exempt from even the little petty accidents and delays
which often render journeys in a less wild country disappointing. I was
disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, and an admirer of
beauty. I can bear fatigue, and welcome privation, and have seen some of
the noblest views in the world. But, in all this, the recollection of
bitterness, and more especially of recent and, more, home
desolation--which must accompany me through life--have preyed upon me
here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the
avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor
the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor
enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty and the power
and the glory around, above, and beneath me."

After having passed eleven months in Switzerland, in about the same
frame of mind, he crossed the Alps, and entered Italy. Who can breathe
the soft air of that beautiful land, without feeling a healing balm
descend on wounds within? The clear atmosphere, and the serene sky, were
to him like the indulgent caresses of a sister, bringing a hope--a
promise--that peace, and even happiness were about to visit his stricken
soul. His first halt was at Milan. There he met with sympathetic, noble
minds, instead of the envi