talians are in no respect more ferocious
than their neighbors--that man must be willfully blind, or
ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraordinary
capacity of this people, or, if such a word be admissible, their
_capabilities_, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of
their conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty,
and amid all the disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the
desolation of battles, and the despair of ages, their still
unquenched "longing after immortality"--the immortality of
independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of
Rome, heard the simple lament of the laborers' chorus, "Roma! Roma!
Roma! Roma non e piu come era prima," it was difficult not to
contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs
of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the
carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy of
France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have
exposed in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For
me,--

"Non movero mai corda
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda."

What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were
useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that
England has acquired something more than a permanent array and a
suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For
what they have done abroad, and especially in the south "verily
they _will have_ their reward," and at no very distant period.

Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that
country whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself,
I dedicate to you this poem in its completed state; and repeat once
more how truly I am ever, your obliged and affectionate friend,

BYRON.

MATTHEWS.

"Of this remarkable young man, Charles Skinner Matthews," says Moore, "I
have already had occasion to speak; but the high station which he held
in Lord Byron's affection and admiration may justify a somewhat ampler
tribute to his memory.

"There have seldom, perhaps, started together in life so many youths of
high promise and hope as were to be found among the society of which
Lord Byron formed a part at Cambridge. Among all these young men of
learning and talent, the superiority in