that she was seized with one of them while making the foul charge of incest against Lord Byron.* Therefore no reliance can be placed on anything that Lady Byron might say, when "helplessly under the control" of these fits.

Neither was she, even in her amiable moods, the perfectly just character that Mrs. Beecher Stowe represents her to have been-"A miracle of mingled strength and weakness." There was certainly much more weakness than strength in Lady Byron's extraordinary temperament.

Mrs. Stowe's long eulogy or Apotheosis of Lady Byron being already before the public, the reader is referred to her "True Story" for the extravagant praises lavished on her patron. Further on it will be seen how little some of poor Lady Byron's transactions were in unison with them during her fits of illusion.

It cannot escape observation that Mrs. Beecher Stowe does the very same thing she blames in others. She accuses the enamoured Guiecioli of representing Lord Byron as a human being endowed with every natural charm, gift and grace. But Mrs. Stowe is determined not to be outdone! Not content with human excellence, the saintly Lady Byron is clothed in heavenly panoply! “There was so much of CHRIST in her” that only to see her, was to be "drawn near to Heaven!"

Let us descend from Mrs. Stowe's heights of fanatical glorification," so much above the comprehension" of our own coarse and common world," and reply to the very "grave"

* See Mrs. Stowe's last publication, "Lady Byron vindicated." Part 2, p. 151-153.

For Lady Byron's state of mind under those circumstaces see Mr. W. Howitt's letter.

charge brought bv Lady Byron's advocate against sundry pens which, it appears, have blunted their points by tilting at the posthumous fame of her immaculate saint.

We know that it is very wrong to drag people out of their graves to answer for high crimes and misdemeanours alleged against them so many years after their death sleepby the way, the unluckily mispaired couple in question have not been suffered to sleep very quietly. The present writer has no wish to disturb unjustly the names of the dead—our question now is with Mrs. Beecher Stowe. Has that lady any right to complain of slanders and misrepresentation with respect to Lady Byron? Has she not done the very same thing herself? Any one who reads attentively what she calls her"True Story," will see that in every line, every sentence bearing any allusion to Lord Byron or his works, the most degrading terms are applied, either direct or insinuated, accusing him of ribaldry and obscenity, and wearing the cloak of deceit and hypocrisy. But does not she put on this cloak herself apparently here, by quoting what has been written in favor of Lord Byron, and thus making a show of fairness, in order to hide the malignancy of her own assertions. She appears to be one of those prejudiced fanatics who

"scandalously nice

Will needs mistake an author into vice." *

She plasters Lord Byron's name—all his motives—his every action and his writings, with slander and misrepresentations as thickly as she covers every wall in New York with her own name! Her virulent hatred of Byron will not let him

Pope's Essay on Criticism,

exist even in Heaven without suffering. She is "more strongly impressed than by anything else," at Lady Byron's perfect conviction-strange to say-that her husband was now a redeemed spirit; that he looked back with pain and shame and regret on his past life."

In Mrs. Stowe's recent book there is a chapter headed"The Direct argument to prove the Crime," in which-very ingeniously-there is no proof whatever! All her proofs are only probabilities, suppositions, and inferences. One of her proofs that he was guilty of incest is, "because that was the most important crime charged against him by rumour!" In short, the whole of this chapter and the next, headed, "Psychological argument," shows the most inveterately malicious hatred against the dead Poet and his works, with persistent determination to fasten, if possible, the most hideous crimes upon him.

Every opportunity is taken to insult the Poet's memory; even his most amiable qualities and actions are,-in her morally jaundiced vision,-misrepresented and blackened; she makes him cruel and brutal as a fiend with peculiar malice — leading a wild career of fashionable folly conscious of a great crime-his gloominess caused by remorse and despair- cravings for unnatural vice-a desperate, despairing, unrepenting soul, whom suffering maddens, but cannot reclaim !

To all this, and much more, Mrs. Stowe tries to prove insanity; she leaves no stone unturned to find matter for crimination. She quotes Scripture, about casting "the first stone." Is she so peculiarly without sin herself that she has collected such a heap of stones to cast upon the dead victim?

without mercy, loading his memory with all the opprobrium she can find to slander it with?

Mrs. Stowe's last book complains of "much invective”— stormy discussion," and " many abusive articles" hurled against her. Is it not her own fault? She has brought the "cruel anguish" that she so piteously laments, upon herself. In considering it her "duty" to make the "disclosures". which are so odious-she committed a gross error of judgment. The great hit which she, no doubt, expected to make, has recoiled upon herself, and damaged her own fame, rather than that of the dead Poet, whom she has laboured so hard to immolate.

We all know that Lord Byron's errors cannot be defended : they are to be deplored; but some allowance may be made in his favor. His childhood was far from being properly cared for, and in his early career left without a Mentor, the companions that he fell amongst, or who gathered round him, were not very likely to regulate his habits or improve his morals. His genius made him a brilliant companion for them, but the society of his day was rather a bane to himself, and the seeds of loose conduct thus planted in his very sensitive nature, took root and sprung up rapidly, like tares among wheat.

But though not a full harvest, enough of the rich grain is preserved for the mental food of ages, when the tares are destroyed, and Mrs. Stowe's bitter weeds along with them forgotten.

Mrs. Stowe relates that "some of Lady Byron's friends had-when she was ill, and not expected to survive-sugcested that she ought to declare the whole truth before

leaving the world, to some person of another country, less likely to be influenced by friends here," &c., and that it was Lady Byron's desire "to recount the whole history to such a person, ," "In order that she might be helped by such a person's views in making up an opinion as to her own duty." Of course, Mrs. Stowe had elected herself THE person. This was, we believe, during the interview when Lady Byron's physicians expected her death; she was in bed, and the scene "had almost the solemnity of a death-bed avowal"" When the "unmistakable" words were spoken, Mrs. Stowe relates that Lady Byron became "so deadly pale." Now this was one of the poor Lady's cold fits, as described by Mr. Howitt, to whose letter the reader is referred. During this interview, which occupied one afternoon, from about two o'clock, Mrs. Stowe represents the sick Lady as being equal to a most extraordinary amount of exertion for a person supposed to be on her death bed; if we only suppose the details to take two hours to relate, when, as Mrs. Stowe says, "She went over with a brief and clear analysis the history of his whole life, as she had thought it out during the lonely musings of her widowhood."

But we now know what was Lady Byron's peculiar habit of "thinking things out" when under the control of her strange, cold fits--that idiosyncracy so well described by Mr. William Howitt, a visiting friend of several years, who saw her in all her moods, either happily amiable, or, as he writes, when "the devil of the North Pole was upon her," and she was then the very opposite to "one of the spirits of the just made perfect," to whom she is compared by her sycophantic parasite, who only had about four interviews with her, and,