"I thought you would have an answer from Mrs. Vn. You have had bore enough with me, and mine already ;" and on the occasion of the death of Allegra, he seems not to have acquitted himself of some blame, for he thus writes to Shelley on that occasion :—

"April, 1822.

"The blow was stunning, and unexpected, for I thought the danger was over by the long interval between the child's amelioration, and the arrival of the express. But I have borne up against it as I best can; so far successfully, that I can go about the usual business of life with the same composure, and even greater. There is nothing to prevent your coming here tomorrow; but perhaps to-day and yester evening it was better not to have met. I do not know that I have anything to reproach in my conduct, and certainly nothing in my feelings and intentions towards the dead. But it is a moment, when we are apt to think that if this or that

had been done, (meaning that, contrary to Shelley's advice, he had not left the child behind him in the convent,) such an event might have been prevented, though every day and every hour shews us that they are most natural and inevitable. T suppose that time will do its cruel

work. Death has done his.

"Yours ever,

"N. BYRON."

Many years after, a lady whose talents and accomplishments are thrown into shade by the qualities of her heart, took a great interest in the mother of Allegra, and had obtained for her, or thought she had obtained, a situation as humble companion. Miss C. was too noble to conceal her story from the ear of her intended benefactress, before she entered on her office; and in consequence of her sincerity, the affair was broken off. How applicable are Shelley's words to this unfortunate lady, whose life before and since this one false step, has never had a shadow of

blame thrown on it, and whose talents, manners, and accomplishments well fitted her for any circle. "Has a woman obeyed the impulse of unerring nature, the world declares against her, pitiless, unceasing war. She must be the tame slave-she must make no reprisals. Theirs is the right of persecution-hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life of infamy-the low and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all return. She is the criminal, the froward, the untameable child; and society, forsooth, the pure and virtuous matron, casts her as an abortion from her undefiled bosom."

Should this passage meet the eye of the overrighteous individual to whom it is applied, let her reflect on these words, and blush through her rouge with shame. No! "the cold-hearted worldling" will smile with selfcomplacency at her own virtue, and deem it one of the proudest and most saving acts of her life, to have repulsed and rejected the frail one. How would morality, dressed in stiff stays and

finery, start from her own disgusting image, could she look in the mirror of Nature."

On Shelley's arrival in London, one of the few persons with whom he was intimate was Leigh Hunt. His acquaintance with him commenced, I believe, in 1813, and it now ripened into the closest intimacy. It was indeed an epoch in his life. Leigh Hunt was at that time joint editor of the far-famed Examiner, and which made him in the eyes of Lord Byron (but more so in those of his future biographer, Mr. Moore, who always had the hell of reviews before him,) a person of some consequence and weight in the literary world.

Leigh Hunt was then living at Hampstead, and here Shelley also, I believe, first met Keats.

I have been furnished by a lady, who, better even than Leigh Hunt, knew Keats, with the means of supplying many interesting particulars respecting him; so well indeed did she know him, that she might have furnished materials for that life of him promised by Mr. Brown, who unfortu

nately died in New Zealand before it was completed, and where Keats's MSS. and papers are said to have been lost. Keats was left fatherless at an early age, and when he came to years of discretion, was apprenticed to an apothecary, but the sight of suffering humanity, and the anatomical school, soon disgusted him with the pursuit, and he abandoned the profession of medicine, but not originally to follow the ill-named flowery paths of poetry; for an authentic anecdote is told of him, corroborative of this remark. One day, sitting dreamily over his desk, he was endeavouring to while away a tedious hour by copying some verses from memory; one of his brother apprentices looking over his shoulder, said, "Keats, what are you a poet?" It is added, he was much piqued at the accusation, and replied, “Poet indeed! I never composed a line in my life.” The same story is told of Walter Scott, who in crossing over one of the Scotch lakes, endeavoured to put his ideas into verse, but on landing had only made two bad rhymes, and observed to