Whither I know not; but the bour's gone by
When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.
Once more upon the waters ! yet once more!

And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to their roar!

Swist be their guidance, wheresve'er it lead!

Though the straiued mast should quiver as a reed,
And the rent canvass fluttering strew the gale,

Still must I on; for I am as a weed,
Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s foam, to sail

Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail. It is this kind of personal allusion that we most object to in the whole of this third canto, and we cannot but think that it forms a con. siderable drawback from the merit of the poem. After what had passed between Lord Byron and his lady, there was something unfair, almost unmanly, in his putting on, for the public, all the airs of a husband injured, but still forgiving, and who was driven from his home, when, in point of fact, the quitting that home was his own choice ; and, of alı the blame which either of the parties might have deserved, his shame must in justice have been the larger.

This fault will, however, be, as it now should be, forgotten, and such parts of the poem as describe the anthor's own feelings will be read by posterity with an interest as intense as that which they have created in his own days. The stanzas which are subjoined are no less remarkable on this account than for their own intrinsic beauty. Never before were the secret workings of the heart of a man of real genius, the dissatisfaction at the cold conventions of the world, and the waywardness which accompanies the heavenly fire with which the bosoin of a real poet burns, so truly or so powerfully described. Such passages are worth all the metaphysics that the brains of pedants ever dreamed

Something too much of this ;—but now 'tis past,

And the spell closes with its silent seal,
Long absent Harold re-appears at last;

He of the breast which fain no more would feel,

Wrung with the wounds which kill not, but ne'er heal;
Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him

In soul and aspect as in age: years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;
And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

over:

His had been quaffed too quickly, and he found

The dregs were wormwood; but he filled again, And from a purer fount, on holier ground,

And deemed its spring perpetual; but in vain !

Still round him clung invisibly a cliain
Which galled for ever, fettering though unseen,

Aud heavy though it clanked not; worn with pain, Which pined although it spoke not, and grew keen, Entering, with every step he took, through many a scene.

Secure in guarded coldness, he had mixed

Again in fancied safety with his kind, And deemed his spirit now so firmly fixed

And sheathed with an invulnerable mind,

That, if no joy, no sorrow furked behind : And he, as one, might midst the

many

stand
Unheeded, searching through the crowd to find
Fit speculation ! such as in strange land
He found in wonder-works of God and Nature's hand.

But who can view the ripened rose, nor seek

To wear it? who can curiously behold
The smoothness and the sheen of Beauty's cheek,

Nor feel the heart can never all grow old ?

Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb ?

Harold, once more within the vortex, rolled
On with the giddy circle, chasing Time,
Yet with a nobler aim than in his youth's fond prime.

But soon he knew himself the most unfit

Of men to berd with Man, with whom he held Little in common; untaught to submit

His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled

In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompelled, He would not yield dominion of his mind

To spirits against whom his own rebelled : Proud though in desolation, which could find A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.

Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;

Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;
Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,

He had the passion and the power to roam;

The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,
Were unto him companionship; they spake

A mutual language, clearer than the tome
of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
For Nature's pages, glassed by suubeams on the lake.
Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars,

Till he had peopled them with beings bright
As their own beams; and earth, and earth-born jars,

And human frailties, were forgotten quite :

Could he have kept his spirit to that flight
He had been happy; but this clay will sink

Its spark imunortal, envying it the light
To which it mounts, as if to break the link
That keeps us from yon heaven, which woos us to its brink.

But in man's dwellings he became a thing

Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome-
Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing,

To whom the boundless air alone were home :

Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome,
As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat

His breast and beak against his wiry dome
Till the blood tinge his plumage, so the heat

Of his impeded soul would through his bosom eat. After this preliminary burst, in which he relieved the feelings of his heart by expressing them, the self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,' and proceeds to give the history of his wanderings, an i of the impressions which are made upon him by the objects he saw, and in all of which the bitterness of his own disappointment mingles itself.

He reaches the scene of the greatest battle that has been witnessed by modern times, the

Place of skulls, The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo ! The stanzas with®which he introduces the subject breathe that indignant scorn which such a mind as bis must feel at a notion then commonly entertained, or said to be entertained, by the party to whose opinions he had in some degree attached himself. He looked upon the result of this last of a long series of fights for freedom's sake as the changing the despotism of one into that of several tyrants, under the title of the Holy Alliance. This notion has been satisfactorily disproved, at least to Englishmen. We should not have noticed the subject but for the sake of observing upon the happy contrast which there is between the passage we have last alluded to and those which immediately follow it, and describe the revelling in Brussels on the night before the battle of Quatre Bras. The sudden alarm and hurrying to the field are given with the utmost power :

There was a sound of revelry by night,

And Belgium's Capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright

The laınps shone o'er fair women and brave men;

A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell ;
But hush! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell !

Did ye not hear it ?-No; 'twas but the wind,

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;
On with the dance; let joy be unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Plcasure meet

To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet-
But, hark !--that heavy sound breaks in once more,

As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before !
Arm! Aru! it is—it is—the cannon's opening roar!

And there was mounting in hot baste: the steed,

The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,

And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;

And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;
And, ncar, the beat of the alarming drum

Roused up the soldier ere the morning star ;

While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
Or whispering, with white lips, ' T'he foe! They come! they come!

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,

Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they pass,
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,

Over the unreturning brave,-alas!

Ere evening to be trodden like the grass
Which now beneath them, but above shall grow

In its next verdure, when this fiery mass
or living valour, rolling on the foe,
And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,

Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay-
The midnight brought the signal sound of strise -
The morn the marshalling in arms

-the day
Battle's magnificently-stern array !
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which— when rent,

The Earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse,-friend, foe,-iu one red burial blent!

In the two succeeding stanzas the poet repairs in some measure the rude sneers he had launched, in another poem, at the Earl of Carlisle, who, as Lord Byron seems now to have thought, deserved better treatment at his hands :

Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine;

Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
Partly because they blend me with his line,

And partly that I did his sire some wrong,

And partly that bright names will hallow song;
And his was of the bravest, and when showered

The death-bolts deadliest the thinned files along,

Even where the thickest of war's tempest lowered,
They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard.
There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee-

And mine were nothing, had I such to give;
But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,

Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,