auty and graceful
carriage. From that day his image seated itself in her remembrance, and
probably in her heart. It was under these favorable auspices that he
made her acquaintance in society. Soon he gained her love. And when
young Byron at the next vacation saw her again, she was already the
willing betrothed of another.

That was still, however, a secret locked up in her heart. Her parents
would not have wished this union. She had not then declared her
intentions, and Lord Byron could not of course guess them. He was still
welcomed at Annesley, and treated as heretofore. The young lady herself,
instead of repelling him, continued to accept his attentions. This
lasted until one day when Musters was bathing with Byron in a river
that ran through the park he perceived a ring which he recognized as
having belonged to Miss Chaworth. This discovery, and the scenes it gave
rise to, obliged the lady to declare her preference.

The grief this broken illusion caused Lord Byron is shown by some of his
early verses, and by the "Dream," written at Geneva, while musing how
different his fate might have been if he had married Miss Chaworth,
instead of Miss Milbank. It might be objected that sorrows, the proof of
which rests on poetry, are not very authentic, and that it is not quite
certain they really did pass through his heart. One might consider with
Galt that this childish sentiment was less a real feeling of love than
the phantom of an enthusiastic attachment, quite intellectual in its
nature, like others that possessed such power over Lord Byron, since
Miss Chaworth was not the sole object of his attention, but divided it
with study and passionate friendships. One might say, with Moore, that
the poetic description given by Lord Byron of this childish love, ought
to serve especially to show how genius and sentiment may raise the
realities of life, and give an immense lustre to the most ordinary
events and objects. In short, one might think that Lord Byron perceived
all the poetic advantages accruing from the remembrance of a youthful
passion, at once innocent, pure, and unhappy; how it would furnish him
with a magic tint to enrich his palette with an inexhaustible fund of
sweet, graceful, and pathetic fancies, with delicate, lofty, and noble
sentiments, and therefore that he resolved to shut it up in his heart,
so as to preserve its freshness amid the withering atmosphere of the
world; and in order to draw thence those exquis