st he could prepare the way
for the acquirement of every virtue, and he resolved, therefore, to
profit by the permission given him of often visiting Byron.

Meanwhile, the young officers continued their jokes, and pretended that
Byron was laughing at the doctor, and making use of him in order to
study Methodism, which he wished to introduce into his poem of "Don
Juan." There is, however, a community of feeling between two frank
natures, and Byron felt that the doctor's sincerity commanded respect,
while the doctor, on the other hand, knew that Lord Byron was too
earnest to condescend to a mockery of him.

"There was," says Kennedy, "nothing flighty in his manner with me, and
nothing which showed any desire to laugh at religion."

When he returned to see Lord Byron, he found him more than ever
preoccupied with his approaching departure for Continental Greece, and
engrossed with a multitude of various occupations and visits. Byron,
nevertheless, received him most graciously, and maintained that jovial
humor which was one of his characteristics in conversation. Byron had
reflected a good deal since his last interview with the doctor, but the
direction which his thoughts had taken was not precisely that which the
doctor had advised him to pursue. They did not agree with the tenets of
the doctor's religion. The latter had not advised an unlimited use of
one's reason, but, on the contrary, had recommended reliance on the
traditional and orthodox teachings of the Church. To reason, however,
constituted in Byron a positive necessity. He could not admit that God
had given us the power of thought not to make use of it, and obliged us
to believe that which in religion, as in other things, appears
ridiculous to our reason and shocks our sense of justice. "It is useless
to tell me," he said, somewhere in his memoranda, "that I am to believe
and not to reason: you might just as well tell a man, 'Wake not, but
sleep.' Then to be threatened with eternal sufferings and torments!--I
can not help thinking that as many devils are created by the threat of
eternal punishment, as numberless criminals are made by the severity of
the penal laws."

Mysteries and dogmas, however, were not objectionable to Byron. This was
shown in his conversation with Kennedy on the subject of the Trinity and
of predestination. However little disposed he may have been to believe
in mysteries, he nevertheless bowed in submission before their
existence, and res