re? All darkened, down
To naked waste a dreary vale of years!
The great magician's dead!'"--YOUNG.

Such griefs are certainly reasonable, just, and honorable: for the
deaths which bury such treasures of genius are real public calamities.
On hearing of Byron's death, one might repeat the beautiful and eloquent
words of M. de Saint Victor:

"What a great crime death has committed! It is something like the
disappearance of a star, or the extinction of a planet, with all the
creation it supposed. When great minds have accomplished their task,
like Shakspeare, Dante, Goethe, their departure from the scene of the
world leaves in the soul the sublime melancholy which presides over the
setting of the sun, after it has poured out all its rays. But when we
hear of the death of a Raphael, of a Mozart, and especially of Byron,
struck down in their flight, just at the time when they were extending
their course, we can not refrain from calling these an eternal cause for
mourning, irreparable losses, and inconsolable regrets! A genius who
dies prematurely carries treasures away with him! How many ideal
existences were linked with his own! What sublime thoughts vanish from
his brow! What great and charming characters die with him, even before
they are born! How many truths postponed, at least, for humanity!"

And we will add: to how many great and noble actions his death has put
an end!

Such regrets do honor as much to those who experience them as to those
who give them rise. But it is not to the enthusiasm created by his
genius, nor to the grief evinced by the Greek nation, for whom he died,
that we will turn for a last proof of the goodness of his nature. Such
regrets might almost be called interested,--emanating, as they do, from
the knowledge of the loss of a treasure. Of the tears of the heart,
which were shed for the man without his genius, shall we ask that last
proof.

These are the words by which Count Gamba describes his affliction:--

"In vain should I attempt to describe the deep, the distressing sorrow
that overwhelmed us all. I will not speak of myself, but of those who
loved him less, because they had seen him less. Not only Mavrocordato
and his immediate circle, but the whole city and all its inhabitants
were, as it seemed, stunned by the blow--it had been so sudden, so
unexpected. His illness, indeed, had been known; and for the three last
days, none of us could walk in the streets, without anxious inquirie