ons. This young man, by a noble inconsistency, drew
back in presence of the moral conclusions of that metaphysical doctrine,
but not without culling from the master's thoughts conclusions, such
that they leave all that is spiritual and immortal without defense,
together with all the legitimate inferences to be derived from the
principles he taught, however impious or absurd.

Among the Germans he had likewise met with several bold doctrines; but,
merely to speak here of the conclusions to which the school he belonged
necessarily brought him, he arrived at those conclusions by a series of
deductions from the study of those great questions, which experience
always ends by referring either to reason or to revelation. Compelled by
the tenets of that school, to solve all these problems by means of the
sensations only, he was naturally led to the conclusion that no such
thing existed as the spirituality of the soul, and hence, that it had
neither the gift of immortality nor that of liberty, nor any principles
of morality. Finally, obliged to seek in tradition the conviction that a
God existed, and that He can only be perceived through a maze of
imperfections, and not as reason conceives Him clearly and simply with
all His necessary attributes of perfection, he was even led to the
necessity of losing sight of a Creator altogether.

The fatal precipice, which this young student himself avoided by the
practical conclusions by which he abided, Byron likewise escaped both by
his conclusions and his theoretical notions. He even hated the name of
atheist to that degree, that at Harrow he wished to fight his companion
Lord Althorpe, because he had written the word atheist under Byron's
name. This is so true that Sir Robert Dallas, of whose judgment no
interpretation can ever be given without making allowances for the
intolerant spirit and the exaggeration required by his notions of
orthodoxy and by his party prejudices, after regretting that Lord Byron
should not have had a shield during his minority to protect him against
his comrades, "proud, free-thinking, and acute sophists," as he calls
them, adds that, if surprise must be expressed, it is not that Byron
should have erred, but that he should have pierced the clouds which
surrounded him, and have dispersed them by the sole rays of his genius.

So many struggles, however, so many contradictions, so many strains upon
the mind, while leaving his heart untouched, could not but multi