after the most brutal conduct on his part, and the greatest misery and keenest remorse on hers, was dissolved in two years by her sinking to the grave, the victim of a broken heart. About three years subsequently, Captain Byron sought to recruit his fortune by matrimony, and having made a conquest of Miss Catherine Gordon, an Aberdeenshire heiress (lineally descended from the Earl of Huntley and the Princess Jane, daughdisarmed his lord-ter of James II of Scotland), he united himself to her, ran through her property in a few years, and, leaving her and her only child, the subject of this memoir, fled to France to avoid his creditors, and died at Valenciennes, in 1791.

stituted his chief delight, and, to the superficial observer, seemed his sole occupation.

He was exceedingly brave, and in the juvenile

that salutary discipline and control so necessary to childhood, doubtless contributed to the formation of the less pleasing features of Lord Byron's character. It must, however, be remembered in Mrs By-wars of the school, he generally gained the vicron's extenuation, not only that the circumstances in which she had been left with her son were of a very peculiar nature, but also that a slight malformation of one of his feet, and great weakness of constitution, naturally obtained for him in the heart of a mother a more than ordinary portion of tenderness. For these latter reasons he was not sent very early to school, but was allowed to expand his lungs, and brace his limbs, upon the neighbouring mountains. This was evidently the most judicious method of imparting strength to his bodily frame; and the sequel showed that it was not the worst for giving tone and vigour to his mind. The savage grandeur of nature | around him; the feeling that he was upon hills where

Foreign tyrant never trod,

But Freedom, with her faulchion bright,
Swept the stranger from her sight;

his intercourse with a people whose chief amuse-
ment consisted in the recital of heroic tales of
other times, feats of strength, and a display of
independence, blended with the wild superna-
tural fictions peculiar to remote and thinly-peo-
pled districts, were admirably calculated to foster
that poetical feeling innate in his character.

tory. Upon one occasion, a boy pursued by another took refuge in Mrs Byron's house: the latter youth, who had been much abused by the former, proceeded to take vengeance on him on the landing-place of the drawing-room stairs, when George interposed in his defence, declaring that nobody should be ill-used while under his roof and protection. Upon this the aggressor dared him to fight, and, although the former was by much the stronger of the two, the spirit of young Byron was so determined, that after the combat had lasted nearly two hours, it was suspended only in consequence of their complete exhaustion.

A school-fellow of Byron's had a very small Shetland pony, which his father had bought for him: they went one day to the banks of the Don to bathe, but, having only the pony, they were obliged to follow the good old practice called in Scotland « ride and tie. When they came to the bridge over that dark romantic stream, Byron bethought him of the prophecy which he has quoted in Don Juan:

Brig of Balgounie, black's your wa';
Wi a wife's ae son and a mear's ae foal,
Doun ye shall fa.

When George was seven years of age, his mo- He immediately stopped his companion, who was ther sent him to the grammar-school at Aber-riding, and asked him if he remembered the deen, where he remained till his removal to prophecy, saying, that as they were both only Harrow, with the exception of some intervals of sons, and as the pony might be a mare's ae foal,» absence, which were deemed requisite for the he would ride over first, because he had only a preservation of his health. His progress beyond mother to lament him, should the prophecy be that of the general run of his class-fellows was fulfilled by the falling of the bridge; wheras the never so remarkable as after those occasional in- other had both a father and a mother. tervals of recreation, when, in a few days he would master exercises which, in the ordinary school routine, it had required weeks to accomplish. But when he had overtaken the rest of the class, he always relaxed his exertions, and, contenting himself with being considered a tolerable scholar, never made any extraordinary effort to place himself at the head of the highest form. It was only out of school that he aspired to be the leader of every thing; in all boyish games and amusements he would be first if possible. For this he was eminently calculated; quick, enterprising, and daring, the energy of his mind enabled him to overcome the impediments which nature had thrown in his way. Even at that early period (from eight to ten years of age), all his sports were of a manly character; fishing, shooting, swimming, managing a horse, or steering and trimming the sails of a boat, con

It is the custom of the grammar-school at Aberdeen, that the boys of all the five classes of which it is composed should be assembled for prayers in the public school at eight o'clock in the morning; after prayers, a censor calls over the names, and those who are absent are punished. The first time that Lord Byron had come to school after his accession to his title, the rector had caused his name to be inserted in the censor's book, Georgius Dominus de Byron, instead of Georgius Byron Gordon as formerly. The boys, unaccustomed to this aristocratic sound, set up a loud and involuntary shout, which had such an effect on his sensitive mind that he burst into tears, and would have fled from the school had he not been restrained by the master.

The answer which Lord Byron made to a fellow scholar, who questioned him as to the cause of the honorary addition of Dominus de Byron »

BY J. W. LAKE.

O'er the harp, from earliest years beloved,
He threw his fingers hurriedly, and tones
Of melancholy beauty died away
Upon its strings of sweetness.

It was reserved for the present age to produce one distinguished example of the Muse having descended upon a bard of a wounded spirit, and lent her lyre to tell afflictions of no ordinary description-afflictions originating probably in that singular combination of feeling with imagination which has been called the poetical temperament, and which has so often saddened the days of those on whom it has been conferred. If ever a man was entitled to lay claim to that character in all its strength and all its weakness, with its unbounded range of enjoyment, and its exquisite sensibility of pleasure and of pain, that man was Lord Byron. Nor does it require much time or a deep acquaintance with human nature to discover why these extraordinary powers should in so many cases have contributed more to the wretchedness than to the happiness of their possessor.

The imagination all compact which the greatest poet who ever lived has assigned as the distinguishing badge of his brethren, is in every case a dangerous gift. It exaggerates, indeed, our expectations, and can often bid its possessor hope, where hope is lost to reason; but the delusive pleasure arising from these visions of imagination resembles that of a child whose gaze is attracted by a fragment of glass to which a sunbeam has given momentary splendour: he hastens to the spot with breathless impatience, and finds the object of his wonder and expectation equally vulgar and worthless. Such is the man of quick and exalted powers of imagination: his fancy over-estimates the object of his wishes; and pleasure, fame, distinction, are alternately pursued, attained, and despised when in his power.

Like the enchanted fruit in the palace of a sorcerer, the objects of his admiration lose their attraction and value as soon as they are grasped by the adventurer's hand; and all that remains is regret for the time lost in the pursuit, and wonder at the hallucination under the influence of which it was undertaken. The disproportion between hope and possession which is felt by all men, is thus doubled to those whom nature has endowed with the power of gilding a distant prospect with the rays of imagination.

We think that many points of resemblance may be traced between Byron and Rousseau. Both are distinguished by the most ardent and vivid delineation of intense conception, and by a deep sensibility of passion rather than of affection. Both, too, by this double power, have held a dominion over the sympathy of their readers, far beyond the range of those ordinary feelings which are excited by the mere efforts of genius. The impression of this interest still accompanies the perusal of their writings; but there is another interest, of more lasting and far stronger power, which each of them possessed,— the continual embodying of the individual character, it might almost be said of the very person, of the writer. When we speak or think of Rousseau or Byron, we are not conscious of speaking or thinking of an author: we have a vague but impassioned remembrance of men of surpassing genius, eloquence, and power,-of prodigious capacity both of misery and happiness: we feel as if we had transiently met such beings in real life, or had known them in the obscure communion of a dream. Each of their works presents, in succession, a fresh idea of themselves; and, while the productions of other great men stand out from them, like something they have created, theirs, on the contrary, are images, pictures, busts of their living selves,-clothed, no doubt, at different times in different drapery, and prominent from a different back-ground,—but still impressed with the same form, and mien, and lineaments, and not to be mistaken for the representations of any other of the children of men.

But this view of the subject, though universally felt to be a true one, requires perhaps a little explanation. The personal character to which we allude, is not altogether that on which the seal of life has been set, and to which, therefore, moral approval or condemnation is necessarily annexed, as to the language or conduct of actual existence: it is the character, so to speak, which is prior to conduct, and yet open to good and to ill-the constitution of the being in body and in soul. Each of these illustrious writers has, in this light, filled his works with expressions of his own character,

a

to his name, served at that time, when he was cricket on the common. He was not remarkable only ten years of age, to point out that he would (nor was he ever) for his learning, but he was be a man who would speak and act for himself always a clever, plain-spoken, and undaunted —who, whatever might be his vices or his virtues, boy. I have seen him fight by the hour like a would not condescend to receive them at second-Trojan, and stand up against the disadvantage hand. It took place the very day after he had of his lameness with all the spirit of an ancient been menaced with a flogging round the school for a fault which he had not committed. When the question was put to him, he replied, « It is not my doing; Fortune was to whip me yesterday for what another did, and she has this day made me a lord for what another has ceased to do. 1 need not thank her in either case, for I have asked nothing at her hands.»

combatant. Don't you remember your battle with Pitt?' (a brewer's son), said I to him in a letter (for I had witnessed it), but it seems that he had forgotten it. You are mistaken, I think,' said he in reply; it must have been with RicePudding Morgan, or Lord Jocelyn, or one of the Douglasses, or George Raynsford, or Pryce (with whom I had two conflicts), or with Moses Moore (the clod), or with somebody else, and not with Pitt; for with all the above-named and other worthies of the fist had I au interchange of black eyes and bloody noses, at various and sundry periods; however it may have happened for all that.'"

The annexed anecdotes are characteristic.

On the 17th of May, 1798, William, the fifth Lord Byron, departed this life at Newstead. The son of this eccentric nobleman died when George was five years old, and as the descent both of the titles and estates was to heirs-male, the latter, of course, succeeded his great-uncle. Upon this change of fortune Lord Byron, now ten years of age, was removed from the immediate care of his mother, and placed as a ward under the guardianship of the Earl of Carlisle, whose father had married Isabella, the sister of the preceding Lord Byron. In one or two points of character this great-aunt resembled the bard: she also wrote beautiful poetry, and after adorn-tended conflagration. His lordship piqued himself ing the gay and fashionable world for many years, she left it without any apparent cause and with perfect indifference, and in a great measure secluded herself from society.

The young nobleman's guardian decided that he should receive the usual education given to England's titled sons, and that he should in the first instance be sent to the public school at Harrow. He was accordingly placed there under the tuition of the Rev. Dr Drury, to whom he has testified his gratitude in a note to the fourth canto of Childe Harold, in a manner which does equal honour to the tutor and the pupil. A change of scene and circumstances so rapid, would have been hazardous to any boy, but it was doubly so to one of Byron's ardent mind and previous habits. Taken at once from the society of boys in ordinary life, and placed among youths of his own newly-acquired rank, with means of gratification which to him must have appeared considerable, it is by no means surprising that he should have been betrayed into every sort of extravagance: none of them appear, however, to have been of a very culpable

The boys at Harrow had mutinied, and in their wisdom resolved to set fire to the scene of all their ills and troubles - the school-room. Byron, however, was against the motion, and by pointing out to the young rebels the names of their fathers on the walls, he prevented the in

not a little upon this early specimen of his power over the passions of his school-fellows.

Byron long retained a friendship for several of his Harrow school-comrades. Lord Clare was one of his constant correspondents; and Scroope Davies was also one of his chief companions before his lordship went to the continent. The latter gentleman and Byron once lost all their money at « chicken hazard,» in oue of the hells of St. James's, and the next morning Davies sent for Byron's pistols to shoot himself with. Byron sent a note refusing to give them, on the ground that they would be forfeited as a deodand, and this comic excuse had the desired effect.

Byron, whilst living at Newstead during the Harrow vacation, saw and became enamoured of Miss Chaworth, the Mary of his poetry, and the maiden of his beautiful « Dream.» Miss Chaworth was older than his lordship by a few years, was light and volatile, and though, no doubt, highly flattered by his attachment, treated our poet less as an ardent lover than as a younger brother. She was punctual to their assignations, which took place at a gate dividing the grounds of the Byrons from the Chaworths, and received all his letters; but her answers, it is said, were written with more of the caution of coquetry than the romance of « love's young dream.» She, however, gave him her picture, but her hand was reserved for another.