,
of all the force of mind and sense of duty which have
carried her through so many domestic griefs, as the
successive deaths of eleven children, some of them come to
men and women's estate, naturally infers. She is the
principal subject of my attention at present, and is, I am
glad to say, perfectly well in body and composed in mind.

Nothing can give me more pleasure than the prospect of
seeing you in September, which will suit our motions
perfectly well. I trust I shall have an opportunity to
introduce you to some of our glens which you have not yet
seen. But I hope we shall have some mild weather before that
time, for we are now in the seventh month of winter, which
almost leads me to suppose that we shall see no summer this
season. As for spring, that is past praying for. In the
month of November last, people were skating in the
neighborhood of Edinburgh; and now, in the middle of May,
the snow is lying white on Arthur's Seat, and on the range
of the Pentlands. It is really fearful, and the sheep are
perishing by scores. _Jam satis terrae nivis_, etc., may well
be taken up as the song of eighteen hundred and sixteen.

So Lord Byron's romance seems to be concluded for one
while--and it is surely time, after he has announced, or
rather they themselves have announced, half-a-dozen
blackguard newspaper editors, to have been his confidants on
the occasion. Surely it is a strange thirst of public fame
that seeks such a road to it. But Lord Byron, with high
genius and many points of a noble and generous feeling, has
Childe Harolded himself, and outlawed himself, into too
great a resemblance with the pictures of his imagination. He
has one excuse, however, and it is a sad one. I have been
reckoned to make a good hit enough at a pirate, or an
outlaw, or a smuggling bandit; but I cannot say I was ever
so much enchanted with my {p.103} work as to think of
carrying off a _drift_ of my neighbor's sheep, or half a
dozen of his milk cows. Only I remember, in the rough times,
having a scheme with the Duke of Buccleuch, that when the
worst came to the worst, we should repair Hermitage Castle,
and live, like Robin Hood and his merry men, at the expense
of all round us. But this presupposed a grand
_bouleversement_ of society. In th