at number of vessels had been
shipwrecked during a violent storm, in the very harbor of Genoa, and
that several respectable families were thereby completely ruined, Lord
Byron _secretly_ sent them money, and to some more than 300 dollars.
Those who received it never knew their benefactor's name. His charity
provided above all for absent ones, for the old, infirm, and retiring.
At Venice, where it was difficult to elude the influence of the climate,
and of the manners of the time, and where he shared for a time the mode
of life of its young men, it was still charity, and not pleasure, that
absorbed the better part of his income. Not satisfied with his casual or
out-of-the-way charities, he granted a large number of small monthly and
weekly pensions. On definitely leaving Venice to reside in Ravenna, he
decided that, in spite of his absence, these pensions should continue
until the expiration of his lease of the Palazzo Mocenigo. Venice
watched him as jealously as a miser watches his treasure, and when he
left it the honest poor were grieved and the dishonest vexed. Listening
to these, one might have been led to believe, that Lord Byron had by a
vow bound himself and his fortune to the service of Venice, and that his
departure was a spoliation of their rights.[38]

In Ravenna his presence had been such a blessing, that his departure was
considered a public calamity, and the poor of the city addressed a
petition to the legate, that he might be entreated to remain.

Not a quarter of his fortune, as Shelley said in extolling his
munificence, but the half of it, did he expend in alms. In Pisa, in
Genoa, in Greece, his purse was ever open to the needy.

"Not a day of his life in Greece," says his physician, Doctor Bruno,
"but was marked by some charitable deed: not an instance is there on
record of a beggar having knocked at Lord Byron's door who did not go on
his way comforted; so prominent among all his noble qualities was the
tenderness of his heart, and its boundless sympathy with suffering and
affliction. His purse was always opened to the poor." After quoting
several traits of benevolence, he goes on to say:--"Whenever it came to
the knowledge of Lord Byron that any poor persons were lying ill,
whatever the maladies or their cause, without even being asked to do it,
my lord immediately sent me to attend to the sufferers. He provided the
medicines, and every other means of alleviation. He founded at his own
expense a ho