alf an hour to a trial of skill at the pistol,
returned, a little before sunset, into the city.

"Lord Byron," says a friend who was sometimes present at their
practising, "was the best marksman. Shelley, and Williams, and
Trelawney, often made as good shots as he--but they were not so certain;
and he, though his hand trembled violently, never missed, for he
calculated on this vibration, and depended entirely on his eye. Once
after demolishing his mark, he set up a slender cane, whose colour,
nearly the same as the gravel in which it was fixed, might well have
deceived him, and at twenty paces he divided it with his bullet. His joy
at a good shot, and his vexation at a failure, was great--and when we
met him on his return, his cold salutation, or joyous laugh, told the
tale of the day's success."

For the first time since his arrival in Italy, he now found himself
tempted to give dinner parties; his guests being, besides Count Gamba
and Shelley, Mr. Williams, Captain Medwin, Mr. Taafe, and Mr.
Trelawney;--and "never," as his friend Shelley used to say, "did he
display himself to more advantage than on these occasions; being at once
polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good
humour; never diverging into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up
the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening." About midnight his
guests generally left him, with the exception of Captain Medwin, who
used to remain, as I understand, talking and drinking with his noble
host till far into the morning; and to the careless, half mystifying
confidences of these nocturnal sittings, implicitly listened to and
confusedly recollected, we owe the volume with which Captain Medwin,
soon after the death of the noble poet, favoured the world.

On the subject of this and other such intimacies formed by Lord Byron,
not only at the period of which we are speaking, but throughout his
whole life, it would be difficult to advance any thing more judicious,
or more demonstrative of a true knowledge of his character, than is to
be found in the following remarks of one who had studied him with her
whole heart,--who had learned to regard him with the eyes of good sense,
as well as of affection, and whose strong love, in short, was founded
upon a basis the most creditable both to him and herself,--the being
able to understand him.[89]

"We continued in Pisa even more rigorously to absent ourselves from
society. However, as there were a g