now chiefly remembered through the castigation which it received from the "Edinburgh Review." To this critique, which galled, but did not depress him, we owe the first spirited outbreak of his talents, in the satire entitled "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," which was published in 1809. Able and vigorous as this was, and creditable to his talents, it contained so many harsh and capricious judgments, that he was afterward anxious to suppress it.

A few days before the publication of this satire, he took his seat in the House of Lords; but he was ill qualified to shine in politics; and seeing that he made no impression there, he soon left England for the continent. In 1811, having lost his mother, he returned home, his private affairs being very much embarrassed. He brought with him the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," which he had written abroad. They were published in March, 1812, and were received by the public with the most unbounded admiration; so that Byron emerged at once from a state of loneliness and neglect, unusual for one in his sphere of life, to be the magnet and idol of society. As he tersely says in his memoranda, “I awoke one morning, and found myself famous." In May of the next year appeared his "Giaour;" and in November, the "Bride of Abydos," (written in a week;) and, about three months afterward, the "Corsair," written in the astonishingly short space of ten days. On the 2d of January, 1815, he was married to Miss Milbanke, the only daughter and heiress of Sir Ralph Milbanke, the only issue of which marriage was Augusta Ada, born on the 10th of December of that year. On the 15th of January of the next year, the husband and wife separated for ever. The cause of this was, and still is, a mystery. But most of those who composed the circles in which Lord Byron moved declared against him, and society withdrew its countenance. Deeply stung by the verdict, he resolved to leave his country, and on the 25th of April, 1816, he quitted England for the last time. His course was through Flanders, and along the Rhine to Switzerland, where he resided until the close of the year, and where he composed some of his most powerful works-the third canto of "Childe Harold," the "Prisoner of Chillon," "Darkness," "The Dream," part of "Manfred," and a few minor poems. The next year he went to Italy, where, for a course of years, he gave himself up to the grossest species of libertinism; and where, as might be expected, he wrote his most licentious and blasphemous works.

In 1823, he interested himself warmly in the cause of the Greeks, then struggling to throw off the Turkish yoke; and in December of that year sailed for Greece, with all the funds he could command, to aid the oppressed in their efforts for freedom. This was, certainly, a redeeming trait in his character, and we are glad to record it. On the 5th of January, 1824, he arrived at Missolonghi, where his reception was enthusiastic, the whole population coming out to meet him. But he had scarcely arranged his plans to aid the nation he had so befriended, when he was seized with a fever, and expired on the 19th of April, 1824.1

Of the character of Lord Byron's poetry, there can be but one opinion in

1 "We are to remember that the period of our lives is not so peremptorily determined by God, but that we may lengthen or shorten them, live longer or die sooner, according as we behave ourselves in this world. Thus, some men destroy a healthful and vigorous constitution of body by intemperance and lust, and do as manifestly kill themselves as those who hang, or poison, or drown themselves."-SHERLOCK.

every honest and pure mind-that, while it exhibits powers of description unusually great, and is full of passages of exquisite beauty, it cannot, as a whole, be read without the most injurious influence upon the moral sensibilities. The tendency of it is to shake our confidence in virtue, and to diminish our abhorrence of vice; to palliate crime, and to unsettle our notions of right and wrong., "Humiliating was the waste and degradation of his genius, and melancholy is the power which his poetry has exerted upon multitudes of minds. The moral tendency of some of his poems is exceedingly pernicious: his complete works ought never to be purchased, and we may feel proud not to be acquainted with them, except by extracts and beauties." Indeed, if any one should possess the fiendish desire to break down the principles of virtue in any young man or young woman, the best way to begin would be to put a copy of Byron's works into the hands of the destined victim. "Fore-warned-fore-armed."1

THE DYING GLADIATOR."

The seal is set.-Now welcome, thou dread power!
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here
Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear;
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear,
That we become a part of what has been,
And grow unto the spot, all-seeing, but unseen.
And here the buzz of eager nations ran,
In murmur'd pity, or loud-roar'd applause,
As man was slaughter'd by his fellow-man.
And wherefore slaughter'd? wherefore, but because
Such were the bloody circus' genial laws,
And the imperial pleasure. Wherefore not?
What matters where we fall to fill the maws
Of worms-on battle-plains or listed spot?

Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot.

1 "I admire the sublimity of his genius. But I have feared, and do still fear, the consequences the inevitable consequences of his writings. I fear, that in our enthusiastic admiration of genius, our idolatry of poetry, the awful impiety and the staggering unbelief contained in those writings are lightly passed over, and acquiesced in, as the allowable aberrations of a master intellect, which had lifted itself above the ordinary world, which had broken down the barriers of ordinary mind, and which revelled in a creation of its own: a world, over which the sunshine of imagination lightened at times with an almost ineffable glory, to be succeeded by the thick blackness of doubt, and terror, and misanthropy, relieved only by the lightning flashes of terrible and unholy passion."-J. G. WHITTIER.

2 We read with horror the accounts of the barbarous and brutal gladiatorial exhibitions among the Romans; and were not the historical evidence irrefutable, we could hardly believe that in one city alone (Capua) forty thousand were kept, and fed, and trained to butcher each other for the gratification of the Roman people. But let us be honest, and not have too much self-complacency. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull the mote out of thy brother's eye." How do modern military "schools"-(our ludi gladiatorii)-among so-called Christian nations, differ in prin ciple from the ancient? Are not young men trained in them, for years, to learn the art of human butchery-to learn how to kill their fellow-men most scientifically? May the day speedily come when our land, by utterly abolishing such establishments, shall set, in this respect, a Christian example to all the nations of the earth!

I see before me the gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand; his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,

And his droop'd head sinks gradually low;
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him; he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away:
He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize;
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday.

All this rush'd with his blood. Shall he expire,
And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan--
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals;
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make

Their clay creator the vain title take

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war:
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wasted them while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou;
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play,
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow:
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear;
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.

NIGHT AT CORINTH.1

'Tis midnight: on the mountains brown
The cold round moon shines deeply down;
Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light,
So widely, spiritually bright;
Who ever gazed upon them shining,
And turn'd to earth without repining,
Nor wish'd for wings to flee away,
And mix with their eternal ray?
The waves on either shore lay there
Calm, clear, and azure as the air;

And scarce their foam the pebbles shook,

But murmur'd meekly as the brook.

In 1715, Corinth, then in the possession of the Venetians, was besieged by the Turks In the "Siege of Corinth," Byron describes one of the delicious nights of that fine climate.

The winds were pillow'd on the waves;
The banners droop'd along their staves,
And, as they fell around them furling,
Above them shone the crescent curling;
And that deep silence was unbroke,
Save where the watch his signal spoke,
Save where the steed neigh'd oft and shrill,
And echo answer'd from the hill,
And the wild hum of that wild host
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast,
As rose the Muezzin's' voice in air
In midnight call to wonted prayer.

A CALM NIGHT AT LAKE GENEVA.

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing

To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved,

That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

It is the hush of night, and all between

Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and, drawing near,

There breathes a living fragrance, from the shore,
Of flowers, yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;
He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life and infancy, and sings his fill;
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill;
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her hues.

AN ALPINE STORM AT LAKE GENEVA.

The sky is changed!--and such a change! Oh night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light

1 The Muezzin's voice The Turks do not use bells to summon the religious to their devo tions. They have an appointed person whose function it is to send forth, to the extent of his voice, the call to wonted prayer.