Part 7 (1/2)

Shepherd--'She did that, sir; by my troth, she did that'

North--'Miss Milbanke knew that he was reckoned a rake and a roue; and although his genius wiped off, by impassioned eloquence in love- letters that were felt to be irresistible, or hid the worst stain of, that reproach, still Miss Milbanketo be the wife of Lord ByronBut still, by joining her life to his in ed her troth and her faith and her love, under probabilities of severe, disturbing, perhaps fearful trials, in the future

'But I think Lady Byron ought not to have printed that Narrative

Death abrogates not the rights of a husband to his wife's silence when speech is fatalto his character as asuspicion over his bones interred, that they are the bones of a--monster?If Byron's sins or crimes--for we are driven to use terrible terainst the Holy Ghost, ought the wheel, the rack, or the stake to have extorted that confession from his 's breast?But there was no such pain here, James: the declaration was voluntary, and it was cal up all her faculties and feelings into unshrinking strength, she denounced before all the world--and throughout all space and all time--her husband, as excommunicated by his vices from woman's bosom

''Twas to vindicate the character of her parents that Lady Byron wrote,--a holy purpose and devout, nor do I doubt sincere But filial affection and reverence, sacred as they are, al duties, which die not with the dead, are extinguished not even by the sins of the dead, were they as foul as the grave's corruption'

Here is what John Stuart Mill calls the literature of slavery for woth and breadth; and, that all women may understand the doctrine, the Shepherd now takes up his parable, and expounds the true position of the wife We render his Scotch into English:--

'Not a few such s do I knohoht to the brink of the grave,--as good, as bright, as innocent as, and farthan, Lady Byron There they sit in their obscure, rarely-visited dwellings; for sy knoell that the deepest and iven to complaint'

Then follows a pathetic picture of one such , treed, on her way to the well for a can of water, her only drink, to sit down on a 'knowe' and say a prayer

'Yet she's decently, yea, tidily dressed, poor creature! in sair 's clothes, a single suit for Saturday and Sunday; her hair, untiray, is neatly braided under her crape cap; and sometimes, when all is still and solitary in the fields, and all labour has disappeared into the house, youone wee orphan by the hand, with another at her breast, to the kirkyard, where the love of her youth and the husband of her prime is buried

'Yet,' says the Shepherd, 'he was a brute, a ruffian, a ed and cursed and swore! Often did she dread that, in his fits of inhuman passion, he would have murdered the baby at her breast; for she had seen hiht years old, on the floor, till the blood gushed from his ears; and then the allows Limmers haunted his door, and he theirs; and it was hers to lie, not sleep, in a cold, forsaken bed, once the bed of peace, affection, and perfect happiness Often he struck her; and once when she was pregnant with that very orphan now sers to touch the flowers on his father's grave

'But she tries to shbours, and speaks of her boy's likeness to its father; nor, when the conversation turns on bygone times, does she fear to let his name escape her white lips, ”My Robert; the bairn's not ill-favoured, but he will never look like his father,”--and such sayings, uttered in a calm, sweet voice Nay, I remember once how her pale countenance reddened with a sudden flush of pride, when a gossiping crone alluded to their wedding; and the 's eye brightened through her tears to hear how the bridegroo that sabbath in his front seat beside his bonny bride, had not his equal for strength, stature, and all that is beauty in ht or wrong, was--forgiveness

Here is a specienerous enius, as to turn all the pathos and power of the strongest literature of that day against the persecuted, pure wo, wicked hastly writings, which had gone sorely against their own moral stomachs, that he was foul to the bone They could see, in Moore's 'Meirl's heart by sending a love-letter, and offer offriendly correspondence,--a letter that had been written to show to his libertine set, and sent on the toss-up of a copper, because he cared nothing for it one way or the other

They ade, brutal, drunken, cruel They had read the filthy taunts in 'Don Juan,' and the naraphy' They had ad themselves that his honour was lost; but still this abused, desecrated woman must reverence her brutal rave of her own kind father and mother

That there was no lover of her youth, that the e-vow had been a hideous, shameless cheat, is on the face of Moore's account; yet the 'Blackwood' does not see it nor feel it, and brings up against Lady Byron this touching story of a poor ho really had had a true lover once,--a lover h that very drunkenness in which the Noctes Club were always glorying

It is because of such transgressors as Byron, such supporters as Moore and the Noctes Club, that there are so iven over to the ani, who, beaten, kicked, starved, and cuffed, still lies by his drunken reat anxious eyes of love and sorrow, and with sweet, brute forgiveness nestles upon his bosom, as he lies in his filth in the snowy ditch, to keep the warmth of life in hi brute,--most mournful and most sacred

But, oh that a noble h-souled, heroic woher duties, and are capable of no higher tenderness, than this loving, unquestioning ani, because God has given hie of moral faculties, no sense of justice, no consequent horror at impurity and vileness

Much of the beautiful patience and forgiveness of women is made possible to them by that utter deadness to the sense of justice which the laws, literature, and ht to induce in worace and virtue

The lesson to wo is, that man may sink himself below the brute, mayin filth like the swine, may turn his home into a hell, beat and torture his children, forsake the e-bed for foul rivals; yet all this does not dissolve the e- vow on her part, nor free his bounden serf froation to honour his memory,--nay, to sacrifice to it the honour due to a kind father and raves

Such was the syland could give to a young , a peeress of England, whose husband, as they verily believed and adht have been 'foul, ainst the Holy Ghost' If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? If the peeress as a wife has no rights, what is the state of the cotter's wife?

But, in the sa come out with the whole story before the world at the time she separated from her husband He says of the tih herback one item,--

'Hoeak, and worse than weak, at such a juncture, on which hung her whole fate, to ask legal advice on an imperfect document! Give the delicacy of a virtuous woman its due; but at such a crisis, when the question hether her conscience was to be free from the oath of oaths, delicacy should have died, and nature was privileged to show unashamed--if such there were--the records of uttermost pollution'

Shepherd--'And what think ye, sir, that a' this pollution could hae been, that sae electrified Dr Lushi+ngton?'

North--'Bad--bad--bad, Jaht leave Byron's iveness; and, where they are, their sister affections will not be far; though, like weeping seraphs, standing aloof, and veiling their wings'