a delicious emanation from
a poet's mind, and the only woman worthy of becoming the wife of Lord
Byron, who sums up in herself all the tenderness which he must have
inspired in or felt for a woman, a sister, or a daughter. But we should
have had, instead of her, three persons who really existed, and who
exercised a great influence over Lord Byron's life. The one a young lady
of eighteen, whom Lord Byron styled light and coquettish, but who really
possessed his heart at fifteen years of age; the other his dear Augusta,
who was truly a Venetia toward him; and finally, his beloved little Ada,
for whom he had such a paternal tenderness. Instead of an elderly
Herbert returning to domestic happiness, which would simply have been
impossible with the wife whom Fate had chosen for Lord Byron, we should
have had a handsome young man who has not waited until he had reached
the mature age of Herbert to be adorned with every virtue, in whom
reason is not the effect of growing years, whose wisdom is not that of
the old; and instead of the pathetic catastrophe which is attributed to
Herbert and Cadurcis together, and which really occurred to Shelley, we
should have had Lord Byron's real death, which was infinitely more
pathetic, and could have been described in equally beautiful and
heartrending language. How sublime would have been the history of the
death of that young man who at the age of thirty-four heroically
sacrifices his life for the independence of a country which is not his
own, and whose patriotism is greater than that of his countrymen, since
he prefers the cause of humanity to the interests of the little spot on
the globe where he was born!

If, then, instead of a novel, Mr. Disraeli had given us a true history,
the work would have been an everlasting monument erected to the memory
of two noble beings, and would have been transmitted to posterity as a
valuable testimony of the virtues of Lord Byron.

As the book stands, and written by such a man as Mr. Disraeli, it will
ever remain a study worthy of being quoted among those whose object it
is to proclaim the truth respecting Lord Byron.

PARIS, _November, 1868_.

THE END.

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