t others all the softness and
grace of mild and gentle affection. When his soul was a prey to passion
and revenge, it was painful to observe the powerful effect upon his
features; but when, on the contrary, he was conquered by feelings of
tenderness and benevolence (which was the natural tendency of his
heart), it was delightful to contemplate his looks. I went to see Lord
Byron the day after Lord Falkland's death. He had just seen the
inanimate body of the man with whom, a few days before, he had spent
such an agreeable time. At intervals, I heard him exclaim to himself,
and half aloud, 'Poor Falkland!' His look was even more expressive than
were his words. 'But his wife,' added he, 'she is to be pitied!' One
could see his soul filled with the most benevolent intentions, which
were sterile.[41] If ever pure action was done, it was that which he
then meditated; and the man who conceived it, and who accomplished it,
was then progressing through thorns and thistles, toward that free but
narrow path which leads to heaven."

Several years later, Mr. Hoppner, English Consul at Venice, and who
spent his life with Byron in that city, wrote in a narrative of the
causes which created so much disgust in Byron for English travellers,
that Byron's affected misanthropy, as observable in his first poems, was
by no means natural to him; and he adds, that he is certain that he
never met with a man so kind as Byron.

We might stop here, certain as we are that all loyal and reasonable
readers are not only convinced of Byron's goodness, but experience a
noble pleasure in admiring it. We can not, however, close this chapter,
without calling the attention of our readers to the last and painful
proofs given of this kindness and goodness of Byron's nature: we allude
to the extraordinary grief, caused by his death.

"Never can I forget the stupefaction," says an illustrious writer, "into
which we were plunged by the news of his death, so great a part of
ourselves died with him, that his death appeared to us almost
impossible, and almost not natural. One would have said that a portion
of the mechanism of the universe had been stopped. To have questioned
him, to have blamed him, became a remorse for us, and all our
veneration for his genius was not half so energetically felt as our
tenderness for him.

"'His last sigh dissolved the charm, the disenchanted earth
Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers?
Her golden mountains whe