understand his exquisite susceptibility, together with the noble impulses native to his soul. "Tell me that Walter Scott is better. I would not have him ill for the world," he wrote to Murray. The gorgeous and solemn eloquence of his Monody on Sheridan is the expression of a generous and mighty heart. His valet in Ravenna saw him kneel on the pavement before the tomb of Dante, and weep. His emotions were so violent on seeing a representation of Alfiéri's Mirra in the theatre at Bologna, that he was seriously indisposed for several days from the effects of "the convulsions, the agony of reluctant tears, and the choking shudder." With such a temperament, a nature so at variance in itself, and sent through a dire ordeal, it is not strange that at times he thought

Too long and darkly, till his brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame.

There was also in Byron an element of perversity, the result of his injured pride pouring from above upon the teeming tenderness below. The obscure working of these two elements in combination gave him a perverse liking to invert the demands of others, baffle their expectations, and appear worse than he was. He liked to surround himself with mystery, even with dread, for the sake of the curiosity it provoked. He sought to blacken himself beyond the truth, for two reasons. First, it distinguished him from other men, who wish to seem better than they are; he would seem worse than he was: it was the implicit satire in which he clothed his scorn of hypocrisy. Secondly, it was a comfort to him, it sustained him in his own eyes, to react from other people's unjust estimate of him to his own knowledge of the truth. Giving fifty guineas to an unfortunate Venetian, - when asked what he had done, he would say: "I told him to go about his business"; and then take pleasure in turning from the mistaken verdict of "cruel " to the approval of his own conscience.

In practice Byron longed for the esteem and love of his fellows, loved and praised the richness of the world.

In experience he was wretched, in consequence of the discord of his faculties and aims: because he had not attained to inner unity. In theory, desiring to reconcile the incongruity, and justify himself, he asked, Why am I so unhappy? The answer he gave was, Because men are bad, and the world is poor. How much sounder the aphorism of the strong, wise Goethe:

Wouldst lead a happy life on earth?

Thou must, then, clothe the world with worth!

Byron would have outgrown his unhappiness if he had resolutely labored with clear purpose to suppress his too sharp and constant consciousness of himself and of his distracted relationships. A pampered and tyrannical idea of self, or a despised and scourged idea of self, is irreconcilable with happiness. An objective treatment of self in the light of truth, as any other object is treated, will gradually adjust it so that the truth itself will be agreeable to it and attune it to a firm concord. He did not live long enough to work himself clear of the feculence of his will, the slag of his passion, and become a pure intelligence, a serene and joyous force. So mightily endowed was he it seems a few years more must have brought him the religious victory all the supreme masters have won. He would have conquered the lesson that detachment, self-renunciation, is the only path for the morbid and moody individual into the free, glad, healthy life of nature and humanity.

That fiery breast is cold now, that titanic spirit at rest. It is well, If his was the pain, be the moral ours.

BLANCO WHITE.

An impressive exemplification of the cruel treatment and isolation consequent on an abandonment of conventional opinions and usages in obedience to personal convictions of truth, is seen in the life of that beautiful type of Christian character, the tender-hearted, self-sacrificing and heroically truthful Joseph Blanco White. Born in

Spain, reared a Catholic, his conscientious inquiries led him to become successively after he had taken up his abode in England -an Episcopalian, a Unitarian, a free theist; and, as the penalty of his disinterested search for truth and adherence to his conclusions, he died, in the purest spirit of martyrdom, poor, obscure, sadly solitary. As could not but be the case in such a country as England, a few noble friends loved him as he deserved to be loved, and never forsook him. One of them has given us the story of his life, a precious legacy for the spirits who are pure enough, lofty and devoted enough, to appreciate it.

A friend whom nature had exempted from doubt on subjects which habit and feeling had sanctioned to him, once found Blanco White "bathed in tears, lamenting that his faith had vanished without the least hope of recovering it." The constitution of his mind made it impossible for him to stop inquiry, and he was often torn with pain on discovering that his fancied belief of doctrines had really arisen from sympathy with persons whom he loved, and whose esteem he could not preserve without subscribing their creed. After hearing how sore his Episcopalian friends were because he had found himself obliged to leave their church, he writes in his journal: 66 I have taken, as usual, a walk in the cemetery. Sitting, very tired, among the tombs, the following thought occurred to me. He who deceives, injures mankind; by not separating myself from the Church of England, I should deceive; therefore, by not separating, I should injure mankind. Kind and excellent friends seem to take a delight in saying to me that I have given a mortal stab to my usefulness. Secret feeling does not allow them to perceive that what leads them to say so is the desire of giving me a stab; for I have already taken a decided step, and that observation can have no effect but that of adding to my sufferings. Do they think that I have acted according to my conscience, or against it? The latter is inconceivable; but if I have acted according to the dictates of my conscience, do they wish I had acted against them? Do they wish that the

T

stab should be given my conscience instead of my usefulness?" A year and a half later he wrote, "The violence of party feeling and the selfish worldliness prominent around, make me shrink more and more from all contact with society. I feel that I must wait for death in this perfect moral solitude, without a single human being near me to whom I may look up for that help and sympathy which old men that have walked on the beaten paths of life expect when their dissolution approaches." On attending the funeral of a clergyman, he says: “I could not prevent a tear from rolling down when the coffin was lowered. There is, indeed, much of my sensibility which is nervous; yet a mind so stored with baffled affections and regrets as mine, may be excused for its weakness. My efforts to suppress external marks of feeling are very great, but not equal to the object. My tear, however, was not for the deceased personally, with whom I was not at all intimate. It was for humanity, suffering, struggling, aspiring, daily perishing and renewed humanity. It is not death that moves me; but the contemplation of the rough path and the darkened mental atmosphere which the human passions and interests, disguised as religion, oblige us to tread and cross on our way to the grave. After this touching glimpse into the depths of his soul, it is piteous to read such expressions in his journal as follow: "I felt so oppressed by solitude in the afternoon, that I desired Margaret to sit in the room, that I might see a human being. My solitude in this world (I do not mean the absence of company) increases in a most melancholy degree. Intellectual convictions, at least with me, are powerful in the regulation of conduct, but very weak in regard to the feelings." What affecting pathos and nobleness of spirit mingle in this epitome of his life, written by him in the album of one of his dearest friends!

Reader, thou look'st upon a barren page:

The blighting hand of pain, the snows of age,

Have quenched the spark that might have made it glow.
Long has the writer wandered here below,

Not friendless, but alone. For the foul hand

Of Superstition snapped every band

That knit him to his kindred: then he fled;
But after him the hideous monster sped
In various shapes, and raised a stirring cry:
"That villain will not act a pious lie.
Men, women, stare, discuss, but all insist,
"The man must be a shocking Atheist.'
Brother or sister, whatsoe'er thou art !

Couldst thou but see the fang that gnaws my heart,
Thou wouldst forgive this transient gush of scorn,
Wouldst shed a tear, in pity wouldst thou mourn
For one who, spite the wrongs that lacerate
His weary soul, has never learned to hate.

Much later he said, "How vehemently I long to be in the world of the departed!" And again, "My bodily sufferings are dreadful, and the misery produced by my solitude is not to be described. But trusting in God's Spirit within me, I await my dissolution without fear. Into thy hands, O Eternal Lord of life, of love, of virtue, I commend my spirit." And then at last, the glad hour, so long waited for, came; and that divine soul sped to its infinite release, no longer to be an exile for truth's sake, to pine for love no more, never again to know what it is to be lonely.

LEOPARDI.

PERHAPS no one of all the men of genius who have lived in recent times has had so lonely a soul and led so lonely a life as Leopardi, the Italian philologist, thinker, and poet, whose name is growing into fame, as his character and fate are becoming known and winning more of love and pity. His intellect, imagination, and heart alike were remarkable for their scope and fervor. He dared to think without checks, and to accept as truth whatever he saw as such. Consequently he rejected the common notions prevalent around him, and was pointed at as a sceptic. He loved his country with a burning patriotism; her bondage and torpor, and the supine degradation of her children, alternately aroused his indignation and oppressed him with the deepest sadness. His sense of his own powers was high, enkindling a grand ambition which his unfortunate circumstances combined to irritate, thwart