away, expecting to find him refreshed on his return-but it was the commencement of the lethargy preceding his death. The last words I heard my master utter were at six o'clock on the evening of the 18th, when he said, ‘I must sleep now;' upon which he laid down never to rise again!—for he did not move hand or foot during the following twenty-four hours. His lordship appeared, however, to be in a state of suffocation at intervals, and had a frequent rattling in the throat: on these occasions I called Tita to assist me in raising his head, and I thought he seemed to get quite stiff. The rattling and choaking in the throat took place every half-hour; and we continued to raise his head whenever the fit came on, till six o'clock in the evening of the 19th, when I saw my master open his eyes and then shut them, but without showing any symptom of pain, or moving hand or foot. 'Oh! my God!' I exclaimed, 'I fear his lordship is gone!' The doctors then felt his pulse, and said, 'You are righthe is gone!'» Lord Byron's death was a severe blow to the people of Missolonghi, and they testified their sincere and deep sorrow by paying his remains all the honours their state could by any possibility invent and carry into exBut a people, when really animated by the passion of grief, require no teaching or marshalling ecution. into the expression of their feelings. The rude and military mode, in which the inhabitants and soldiers of Missolonghi, and of other places, vented their lamentations over the body of their deceased patron and benefactor, touches the heart more deeply than the vain and empty pageantry of much more civilized states. Immediately after the death of Lord Byron, and it was instantly known, for the whole town were watching the event, Prince Mavrocordatos published a proclamation, ordering—thirty-seven minute guns to be fired from the grand battery, the following morning at daylight, being the number corresponding with the age of the illustrious deceased-all the public offices, even to the tribunals, to remain closed for three successive day-sall the shops, except those for provisions and medicines, to be shut-and every species of public amusement and festivity at Easter to be suspended. A general mourning was also ordered for twenty-one days, and prayers and a funeral service to be offered in all the churches. up The following noble and affecting verses on his own birth-day, were found after Lord Byron's death, written in his journal, with only this introduction :January 22: on this day I complete my thirty-sixth year. "T is time this heart should be unmoved, My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The fire that on my bosom preys The hope, the fear, the jealous care, But 't is not thus-and 't is not here Such thoughts should shake my soul, not now, Where glory decks the hero's bier, Or binds his brow. The sword, the banner, and the field, Was not more free. Awake! (not Greece-she is awake!) Awake my spirit! Think through whom Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, And then strike home! Tread those reviving passions down, Unworthy manhood! unto thee If thou regret'st thy youth, why live? Is here:-up to the field, and give Seek out-less often sought than found, Lord Byron's literary career may be divided into four important stages, of which the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers may be considered the first-Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, with the Corsair, etc. the second-Beppo and Don Juan, the third-Cain and the Vision of Judgment, etc., etc., the fourth. The first efforts of his lordship's minor muse, in the «Hours of Idleness, » with all the faults of a novice in the Parnassian school, still evinced traits of genius and of promise, particularly when he sings of his «< Mary.» From the stanzas which begin thus-« I would I were a careless child,> I cannot forbear making some quotations, as they indicate that « melancholy had marked him for her own,» even at that early period of his life, and contain moreover much of the true spirit of poesy: Few are my years, and yet I feel The world was ne'er design'd for me; I loved-but those I loved are gone, When all its former hopes are dead! Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul, Fain would I fly the haunts of man, Which bear the turtle to her nest! Then would I cleave the vault of heaven, |