Part 11 (1/2)

As to the story of using his wife's ives, directly in the face of his own Letters and Journal, the saiven before by Medwin, and which caused such merriment when talked over in the Noctes Club,--that he had with her only a e portion of 10,000 pounds; and that, on the separation, he not only paid it back, but doubled it {119}

So on the authoress goes, sowing right and left the most transparent absurdities and misstatements hat Carlyle well calls 'a conorance' Who should know, if not she, to be sure? Had not Byron told her all about it? and was not his fa a dim suspicion that this confused style of attack and defence in reference to the two parties under consideration ht, itself proceeds tothe controversy of Lord Byron with his wife

The rest of the review devoted to a powerful attack on Lady Byron's character, the most fearful attack on thee, and restate, in a most workmanlike manner, the confused accusations of the book

Anticipating the objection, that such a re-opening of the inquiry was a violation of the privacy due to wo fae usually is a private ht to intermeddle with or discuss, yet--

'Lord Byron's was an exceptional case It is not too e been a happy one, the course of events of the present century enius which poured itself forth in ”Don Juan” and ”Cain” ht have flowed in far different channels; that the ardent love of freedohi ht at thisto the counsels of his experience and wisdoton, Lyndhurst, and Broughaainer or a loser by the exchange is a question which everyto his own tastes and opinions; but the possibility of such a change in the course of events warrants us in treating ould otherwise be a strictly private matter as one of public interest

'More than half a century has elapsed, the actors have departed froe, the curtain has fallen; and whether it will ever again be raised so as to reveal the real facts of the drama, may, as we have already observed, be well doubted But the timents of evidence, clear them as far as possible from the incrustations of passion, prejudice, and malice, and place them in such order, as, if possible, to enable us to arrive at some probable conjecture as to what the skeleton of the draether all the facts of Lady Byron's case, just as an adverse laould put theorously and ably, and with an air of indignant severity, as of an honest advocate who is thoroughly convinced that he is pleading the cause of a wronged man who has been ruined in narave, by the arts of a bad wouised under the cloak of religion

Havingout ONE, {121} of which he could not have been ignorant had he studied the case carefully enough to know all the others, he proceeds to suainst the criminal thus:--

'We would deal tenderly with the memory of Lady Byron Feomen have been juster objects of compassion It would seem as if Nature and Fortune had vied with each other which should be nant power had rendered all their bounty of no effect Rank, beauty, wealth, and mental powers of no common order, were hers; yet they were of no avail to secure common happiness The spoilt child of seclusion, restraint, and parental idolatry, a fate (alike evil for both) cast her into the arenius, passion, and the world What real or fancied wrongs she suffered, we may never know; but those which she inflicted are sufficiently apparent

'It is said that there are some poisons so subtle that they will destroy life, and yet leave no trace of their action The eance of the law; but he is not the less guilty So the slanderer who e; who deals in hints and insinuations: who knows s too painful to state; who forbears, expresses pity, sos his shoulders, looks with

”The significant eye, Which learns to lie with silence,--”

is far uilty than he who tells the bold falsehood which may be met and answered, and who braves the punishment which must follow upon detection

'Lady Byron has been called

”The moral Clytemnestra of her lord”

The ”nation

'The conclusion at which we arrive is, that there is no proof whatever that Lord Byron was guilty of any act that need have caused a separation, or prevented a re-union, and that the iuest conjecture; that whatever real or fancied wrongs Lady Byron may have endured are shrouded in an impenetrable mist of her own creation,--a poisonous miasma in which she enveloped the character of her husband, raised by her breath, and which her breath only could have dispersed

”She dies and ive her”'

As we have been obliged to review accusations on Lady Byron founded on old Greek tragedy, so noe are forced to abridge a passage from a modern conversations-lexicon, that we ood taste in a conservative English reviehen speaking of ladies of rank in their graves

Under the article 'Brinvilliers,' we find as follows:--

MARGUERITE D'AUBRAI, MARCHIONESS OF BRINVILLIERS--The singular atrocity of this woives her a sort of infamous claihter of D'Aubrai, lieutenant- civil of Paris, who h possessed of attractions to captivate lovers, she was for soth became madly in love with a Gascon officer Her father imprisoned the officer in the Bastille; and, while there, he learned the art of co subtle and ht it to the lady, who exercised it with such success, that, in one year, her father, sister, and two brothers became her victims She professed the utmost tenderness for her victims, and nursed theht atteious, and devoted to works of charity; and visited the hospitals a great deal, where it is said she tried her poisons on the sick'

People have land, about violating the repose of the dead We should like to knohat they call this Is this, then, what they ine a leading review coe equally brutal about his own mother, or any dear and revered friend

Men of Aland, what do you think of this?