s he
had gone through, gave place, on his arrival, to the most lively joy.
Lord Byron met with a reception worthy of himself.[109] But this
enthusiastic joy, which found expression in songs as well as tears,
subjected his patience and good-nature to another sort of trial.

"After eight days of such fatigue," says Count Gamba, "he had scarcely
time to refresh himself, and converse with Mavrocordato, and his friends
and countrymen, before he was assailed by the tumultuous visits of the
primates and chiefs. These latter, not content with coming all together,
each had a suite of twenty or thirty, and not unfrequently, fifty
soldiers! It was difficult to make them understand that he had fixed
certain hours to receive them. Their visits began at seven in the
morning, and the greater part of them were without any object." This is
one of the most insupportable annoyances to which a man of influence and
consideration is exposed in the East.

"_I saw Lord Byron bear all this with the greatest patience._"

Could an irritable temper have done so? For my part, I think that this
journey alone, borne, as we have seen, by his letters and the unanimous
testimony of his companions, with such perfect good-humor, that he could
jest, be quite resigned to unavoidable evils, show indulgence to the
faults of others, however great the sufferings entailed thereby on
himself; and display great self-denial, strength of mind, and
imperturbable serenity, amid frightful dangers; all these qualities, I
say, paint the moral nature of the man better than all analyses and
commentaries.

But alas! while displaying his virtues, this journey also brings out his
faults: since, prudent in behalf of others, he was not at all so for
himself; and his want of prudence planted in him the germs of the
disease which was so soon to be fatally developed in that stifling
atmosphere of Greece, then full of tumult and confusion. If the limits
of this chapter allowed, we could multiply proofs of his naturally
amiable disposition at all periods of his life; and we would show what
he was in Switzerland, at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, and in Greece,
up to his last hour, as he has been described by Shelley, Hoppner, M. de
G----, Medwin, Lady B----, and so many others. But to those who have
said he was irritable because, feeling himself susceptible of irritation
and anger, he declared himself to be so, I will content myself with
answering simply by a few lines borrowed f