strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentred and impatient feelings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient, and unassuming, than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries.'

In the opening of the poem is described a ride on the Lido-Lord Byron's favorite resort-in which the poet accompanied his friend. The untimely deaths of both of them have given an interest to this work in addition to that which its own beauty confers on it:

'I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,

Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,

Abandons; and no other object breaks

The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes

A narrow space of level sand thereon,

Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.

This ride was my delight. I love all waste

And solitary places; where we taste

The pleasure of believing what we see

Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:

And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; and yet more
Than all, with a remembered friend I love
To ride as then I rode; for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air
Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth

Harmonizing with solitude, and sent

Into our hearts aërial merriment.

So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,

But flew from brain to brain-such glee was ours,
Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
None slow enough for sadness.'

We cannot, as we would willingly, indulge ourselves and our readers by dwelling very long on this beautiful poem, but we should not be thanked, perhaps not forgiven-unless we gave the following extract:

If I had been an unconnected man,

I, from this moment, should have formed some plan.
Never to leave sweet Venice: for to me

It was delight to ride by the lone sea:
And then the town is silent-one may write
Or read in gondolas by day or night,
Having the little brazen lamp alight,
Unseen, uninterrupted :-books are there,
Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair
Which were twin-born with poetry ;—and all
We seek in towns, with little to recall

Regret for the green country :-I might sit
In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit
And subtle talk would cheer the winter night,
And make me know myself:-and the fire light
Would flash upon our faces, till the day

Might dawn, and make me wouder at my stay."

The mournful recollection that the spirits which lent light to such scenes are now quenched in the darkness of death forces itself upon us, and damps the feeling of pleasure which the description of these nights would otherwise create. How different such nights from those in which Lord Byron had indulged at Venice, before the arrival of his friend!

In this poem mention is also made of Lord Byron's child, Allegra, who, it will be remembered, is spoken of in a codicil to his will, where the bequest made to her is on condition that she did not marry an Englishman. This child is since dead, and perhaps it is better for the happiness of many persons that she is so. She is said to have been

one of the most beautiful and engaging creatures ever beheld, and exactly as she is described in the following lines:

The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim:
Ere Maddalo arose I called on him,

And, whilst I waited, with his child I played;

A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made;

A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being;
Graceful without design, and unforeseeing;
With eyes-Oh! speak not of her eyes! which seem
Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam
With such deep meaning as we never see
But in the human countenance.

With me

She was a special favorite: I had nursed

Her fine and feeble limbs, when she came first

To this bleak world; and she yet seemed to know,
On second sight, her ancient playfellow,

Less changed than she was by six months or so.
For, after her first shyness was worn out,

We sate there, rolling billiard-balls about,
When the Count entered.'

And with this extract our notice of the clegant and refined

which it is taken must end.

In addition to the disgust which he had taken against the profligacies of Venice, which he did not hate the less because he had shared them, other circumstances prompted him to leave it. The Austrian government began to annoy him, by showing, in a more remarkable manner than they had done before, that he was a suspected person, because he was known to be hostile to their domination in that city. His papers and books were stopped at the Dogana, and he found himself incouvenienced by the repeated applications which became necessary to procure their delivery. His letters, too, were opened; and all the petty insolences of office, which it is equally impossible to bear or to resent, were practised upon him; and the last affront was put upon him by the proscription of his works. For the latter he did not care much, because the prohibition applied only to translations, which were so bad that he was heartily ashamed of them; and, but that he felt himself obliged to take some notice of it, because it was one among many insults, he would probably have disregarded it.

Lord Byron's desire to see again the Countess Guiccioli, with whom

he had become acquainted in Venice, and who was at this time with her husband and her relations at Ravenna, was not among the least of his inducements to quit Venice. In Captain Medwin's Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron' it is said that the following stanzas from his lordship's poem of 'Beppo' describe the countess's beauty, under the pretence of speaking of a picture in the Manfrini Palace:

Love in full life and length, not love ideal,

No, nor ideal beauty-that fine name—
But something better still; so very real,

That the sweet model must have been the same;
A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal,
Wer't not impossible, besides a shame:
The face recalls somne face, as 'twere with pain,
You once have seen, but ne'er will see again:
One of those forms which flit by us when we

Are young, and fix our eyes on every face:
And, oh the loveliness at times we see

In momentary gliding, the soft grace,
The youth, the bloom, the beauty, which agree,
In many a nameless being we retrace,

Whose course and home we knew not, nor shall know,
Like the lost Pleiad, seen no more below.'

The mention of Captain Medwin's book gives us an opportunity, which we gladly avail ourselves of, to bear testimony to its general merits, and, above all, to that of its authenticity. It is just such a book as might have been expected from the author. It is fair, frank, and fearless-written without any aim at authorship-and consisting merely of the memoranda and recollections of conversations which were too vivid to be forgotten, and bearing upon the surface marks of strict, and even scrupulous, veracity. In any other hands than those of Captain Medwin an immense book would have been made out of the materials he possessed. He has, however, with great good taste, and with a proper feeling for himself, as well as for the memory of Lord Byron, chosen only to present to the public such particulars as will enable them to view, for the first time, the mind of a man who has occupied so large a portion of their attention during the last ten years. While the unpretending and judicious manner in which Captain Medwin has executed the task he imposed upon himself is highly creditable

to his own character, it has also the effect of giving a value to his book which all the fine writing in the world could not confer upon it. It has already entitled itself to a place beside Boswell's Memoirs of Dr. Johnson,' and will be looked upon by posterity with equal, perhaps superior, respect. It will be always recognised by the style, and by the very faults which it contains, as the description, by a man of honour and feeling, of the mind of a gentleman who was himself the soul of honour.'

In the present state of the periodical press Captain Medwin may look for attacks from various quarters for the honest carelessness with which he has used the names of individuals. We do not know how he could have avoided doing so without compromising his own reputation and that of his deceased friend. He will probably care little about either praise or blame, and rest satisfied with the consciousness of having fairly done what he felt to be a duty; and, valueless as it may be to him, we gladly take this opportunity of expressing our opinion of his merit and the worth of his book.

In the preparations necessary for the present work we had collected many of the facts which Captain Medwin's book contains; and as they were all of them drawn, like his, from sources of unquestionable authenticity, we are able to pronounce that they are, in every instance, as far as our information goes, perfectly accurate. The manner of our publication has prevented us from being before this gentleman in the field, but we shall pursue our path with no less satisfaction because he has preceded us.

From Captain Medwin we learn a fact with which we were not before acquainted; viz. that the following sounet, prefixed to The Prophecy of Dante,' was addressed to the Countess Guiccioli :

Lady! if for the cold and cloudy clime

Where I was born, but where I would not die,

Of the great Poet-Sire of Italy

I dare to build the imitative rhyme,

Harsh Runic copy of the South's sublime,
Thou art the cause; and, howsoever I
Fall short of his immortal harmony,
Thy gentle heart will pardon me the crime.
Thou, in the pride of beauty and of youth,
Spak'st; and for thee to speak and be obeyed