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gravity, their woes and sufferings, as an apology for begging a bed and morsel for the night. God forgive me! but I partook of Byron's levity at the idea of personages so consequential wandering destitute in the streets seeking for lodgings from door to door, and rejected at all.

"Next day, however, they were accommodated by the governor with an agreeable house in the upper part of Valletta; and his lordship, as soon as they were domiciled, began to take lessons in Arabic from a monk

I believe one of the librarians of the public library. His whole time was not, however, devoted to study; for he formed an acquaintance with Mrs. Spencer Smith, the lady of the gentleman of that name who had been our resident minister at Constantinople. He affected a passion for her; but it was only Platonic. She, however, beguiled him of his valuable yellow diamond ring.* She is the Florence of Childe Harold, and merited the poetical embalmment, or rather the amber immortalisation she possesses there, being herself a heroine. There was no exaggeration in saying, that many incidents of her life would appear improbable in fiction. Her adventures with the Marquis de Salvo form one of the prettiest romances in the Italian language; every thing in her destiny was touched with adventure: nor was

• Alluding to an adventure at Seville. Vide Life of Lord Byron, vol. i. p. 284, 12mo edit.

it the least of her claims to sympathy, that she had incurred the special enmity of Napoleon.

"After remaining about three weeks at Malta, Byron embarked with his friend in a brig of war, appointed to convoy a fleet of small merchantmen to Prevesa. I had, about a fortnight before, passed over with a packet on her return from Messina to Girgenti, and did not fall in with them again till the following spring, when we met at Athens. In the mean time, besides his Platonic dalliance with Mrs. Spencer Smith, Byron had involved himself in a quarrel with an officer; but it was satisfactorily settled. His residence at Malta did not greatly interest him. The story of its old chivalrous masters made no impression on his imagination

none that appears in his works; but it is not the less probable that the remembrance of the place itself occupied a deep niche in his bosom; for I have remarked, that he had a voluntary power of forgetfulness, which, on more than one occasion, struck me as singular; and I am led, in consequence, to think, that something unpleasant, connected with this quarrel, may have been the cause of his suppression of all direct allusion to the island. It was impossible that his imagination could avoid the impulses of the spirit which haunt the walls and ramparts of Malta; and the silence of his muse on a topic so rich in romance, and so well calculated to awaken associations concerning the

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knights, in unison with the ruminations of Childe. Harold, persuades me that there must have been some specific cause for the omission. If it were nothing in the duel, I should be inclined to say, notwithstanding the seeming improbability of the notion, that it was owing to some curious modification of vindictive spite. It might not be that Malta should receive no celebrity from his pen; but assuredly he had met with something there which made him resolute to forget the place. The question as to what it was, he never answered: the result would have thrown light into the labyrinths of his character."

The view which is here engraved, after Turner's drawing, is of La Valetta, the chief city of the island, remarkable for the prodigious strength of its fortifications, which present from the sea an appearance of unconquerable power.

This island is identified with a series of historical and classical reminiscences, more certain and connected than those perhaps of any other known spot upon earth. Remains of the Celts and Phoenicians give evidence of their possession of Malta. Thucydides and Diodorus both mention it as a Phoenician colony. The Carthaginians left many monuments; and candelabra found here with Punic inscriptions are preserved in the museum of the palace of the grand master. From the Carthaginians it fell, with Sicily, under the

Roman empire; and on its decline, into the power of the Saracens. From them it was wrested, in 1089, by Roger, Count of Sicily; and subsequently formed, with the latter country, part of the Spanish dominions. On the expulsion of the Knights of St. John from Rhodes, this island was given to them by the Emperor Charles the Fifth to defend it, as one of the outworks of Christendom, against the Turks, which they did nobly; and it was retained by them till 1798, when the island was taken by Buonaparte. In 1800, after a blockade, it was surrendered to the English; and it was confirmed to the British Government by the treaty of Paris in 1814. It has ever since been in possession of the English, to whose mercantile interests, as a station in the Mediterranean, its occupation is of great importance.

Malta is the Melita of St. Paul: his name is still given to the spot where he was shipwrecked. Here he is said to have stayed three months, and to have propagated the Gospel.