ful generation. At
Cambridge, among all the monuments which recall the glories of the past,
Lord Byron's statue commands the rest, and occupies the place of honor.
The rooms which he had there are shown and reverenced as places which
have harbored genius. In Parliament the same man who formerly, by unjust
and unmerited criticisms of the youthful poet, decried his growing
genius, and who was guilty of other wrongs against him, has made an act
of reparation and of justice by expressing publicly his regret that a
grudge of the dean in Byron's time had prevailed to prevent a monument
being erected in Westminster Abbey to the memory of the poet. The
pilgrimage to Newstead is looked upon as an intellectual feast, if not
as a duty, by young Englishmen, and his genius is so much revered by
them that they do not admit that he is equalled by any contemporary poet
or likely to be surpassed by those who follow. No doubt, therefore,
England now-a-days only prefers what formerly she used to exact from her
poets. Moore's culpable timidities and Macaulay's declamatory
exaggerations must, at least, be looked upon as weaknesses of character,
which would have been disowned by themselves, had they lived long enough
to witness the change in public opinion.

Although full justice has not yet been done to the noble character of
the man, still partial justice has been rendered to Byron's memory by
the summary dismissal of the numerous false writings which appeared and
which tended to replace the truth by the creations of fancy, and to put
into the mouth of the poet the thoughts of their authors and not his
own, or to insult him by a magnanimous defense, the honor and glory of
which was to redound entirely to the writers. It is necessary to
observe, that if Byron was openly calumniated during his lifetime, he
was not less so after his death by disguised slander, especially by that
kind of absolution which in reality is one of the most odious forms of
calumny, since it is the most hypocritical and most difficult to deal
with, and least likely to be touched. But England has at last understood
the truth and settled all such opinions.

To England, therefore, these pages, which contain the rectification of
certain old opinions, will be useless. But can the same be said of other
countries, and of France especially? Even now-a-days, we read such
fanciful appreciation of Byron's character that we could almost believe
that the rumors and calumnies whic