hen they really exist, they
should be pointed out; the duty of criticism being to discern and to
point to the nature and limits of these analogies.

When Byron began his travels, his genius ever sought an outlet. Too
young to have as yet much experience, he had only made known what were
his tendencies.

The education of his genius began in his childhood, on the romantic
banks of the Dee and on the shores of the ocean; in the midst of the
Scottish firs, in the house of his mother, which was peopled with
relics of the past; and at Newstead Abbey, situated in the heart of the
romantic forest of Sherwood, which is surrounded by the ruins of the
great Norman abbeys, and teems with traditional recollections of Robin
Hood. The character of that sympathetic chief of the outlaws, who was a
nobleman by birth, and who was always followed by the lovely Marian,
dressed up as a page; his generosity, his courage, his cleverness, his
mixture of virtue and vice, his pride, his buoyant and chivalrous
nature, his death even, which was so touching, must, to our mind, have
produced a powerful impression upon one who, like Byron, was gifted with
as much heart as imagination. At least the poet's fancy, if not the acts
of the man himself, must have been influenced by these early
impressions; and, no doubt, Conrad, and other heroes of his early poems,
must have sprung from the poet's recollections of the legendary stories
in the midst of which he had been nursed. In any case, however, the
impressions which he had received did not affect his nature.

He had, notwithstanding his youthful years, been able to show the
measure, not the tendency of his genius, as well as his aversion for all
that is artificial, superficial, insipid, and effeminate; and he had
proved that the two great characteristics of his nature were energy and
sensitiveness.

An education thus begun was to be continued and matured during his first
voyage among scenes the most poetical and romantic in the world; in the
glorious East, where there exists a perpetual contrast between the
passionate nature of man and the soft hue of the heavens under the
canopy of which he lives.

The manners, character, ideas, and singular passions of those races,
which civilization has not yet tamed down; their energy, which often
betrays itself in the perpetration of the greatest crimes, and as
frequently in the practice of the finest qualities; and the life which
Byron was forced to lead amon