to cause persons of even
slight sensibility to preserve moderation. Yet, with his sensibility and
the knowledge of his worth, how did he act?--what did he say? I will not
speak of his "Farewell," of the care he took to shield her from blame by
throwing it on others, by taking much too large a share to himself,
when in reality his sole fault lay in having married her; because it
might be objected that, when he acted thus, he had _not given up the
wish of reunion_.

But at Venice, and more especially at Ravenna and Pisa, this project
certainly had ceased to exist; the measure of insult was filled up to
overflowing. And yet, in one of those days of exasperation which letters
from London never failed to produce, and precisely when he was writing
pages on Lady Byron that could scarcely be complimentary, he learned
that she had been taken ill. His anger and his pen both fell
simultaneously, and he hastened to throw into the fire what he had
written. Another time he was told that Lady Byron lived in constant
dread of having Ada forcibly taken from her.

"Yes," he replied, "I might claim her in Chancery, without having
recourse to any other means; but I would rather be unhappy myself than
make Lady Byron so."

And he said this, well knowing how his name was kept from his daughter,
like a forbidden thing; and that his picture was hidden from her sight
by a curtain.

One day at Rome, while he was walking amid the ruins of the Forum,
treading upon those mighty relics that, to him, breathed language and
well-nigh sentiments, that seemed like some magic temple of the past,
Lord Byron traced back, in thought, his own career. The meannesses of
which he had been, and still was, the victim rose up to view. He allowed
his thoughts to wander amid the saddest memories. All the wounds of his
still bleeding heart opened afresh. The serenity of the starry sky, the
silence of that solemn hour, the ideas of order, peace, and justice,
which such a scene ever awakens, contrasted strangely with the material
devastation around worked by time. The natural effect of a grand
spectacle like this, is to render sadder still those moral ruins
accumulated within by the wickedness of man.

Then did his past, so recent still, rise up before him in all its
bitterness. And, taking earth and heaven to witness, he exclaimed:--

"Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain sear'd, m