LORD BYRON. detractors would do well to imitate. Thousands who before they read his works joined in the yell of execration against him as a literary monster, now recant the prejudice, and see the greater monster in his calumniators. They see the dishonesty of the endeavour to identify Byron with the characters he has written, and his opinions with the language they utter, without admitting that it would be as just to pronounce Milton his own Satan, Gesner personified in his Cain, and that the great and good "Ariosto of the North" expressed his own opinions when he wrote those of Henbane Dwining. Such an independent writer as Byron was sure to create enemies. All whose pretences he unmasked, or whose darling vices he exposed, and who had, even when his attacks were general, felt their particular justice-all such hypocrites hated him. Whatever may have been the noble poet's errorsand they were legion-hypocrisy was not one of them. If he had had but a tithe of the average proportion among men of that most common and convenient vice, his faults would have appeared venial, or remained unknown or uncommented upon; but "all the cants of this canting world" have been poured out upon him by the unprincipled and the prejudiced. Patriotism has been denied to him, because he detested party. It has been denied that he had any sense of moral obligation, because he did not conceal its occasional derelictions; but who that can lay claim to half the number of such good and moral actions as are recorded in his Life by Moore, will cast the first stone at him? He has been called, too, a man without religionman without sect he may have been, but could he be without religion who wrote the following lines? "Father of Light, on Thee I call! Thou see'st my soul is dark within ; Shall man confine his Maker's sway To Gothic domes of mouldering stone? Thy temple is the face of day; Earth, ocean, heaven, Thy boundless throne. Shall each pretend to reach the skies, Thou who in wisdom placed me here, Who, when thou wilt, canst take me hence; Ah! whilst I tread this earthly sphere, Extend to me thy wide defence. To Thee, my God, to Thee I call! a LORD BYRON. If, when this dust to dust 's restored, To Thee I breathe my humble strain, This erring life may fly at last." Twenty years after writing the above, he said to Dr. Kennedy," Devotion is the affection of the heart, and that I feel; for when I view the wonders of the creation, I bow to the majesty of heaven; and when I feel the enjoyment of life, health, and happiness, I feel grateful to God for having bestowed these upon me." Was it said that Byron had no religion, because he thought that a prayer of the heart, offered to the Almighty under the canopy of heaven, was as efficacious as when repeated, according to act of parliament, in a temple? He had boldness enough to avow so dangerous an opinion as this, though it is held by thousands who conceal it towards him, however, pardon would have been impolicy; and there is no subject upon which the presumption of man prompts him to rush so impiously to judgment as upon the opinions of his fellows opinions which God alone can truly know. "Ye narrow souls, take heed How ye restrain the mercy you will need!" Byron is now gone to that account where his actions and his thoughts will be judged, not by his weak and erring fellow-men, who, when they arraigned him, forgot the great Christian precept of charity, but by One "who knoweth all hearts," and who is the only source of mercy. "Peace to his manes; may his spirit find that rest in eternity it was a stranger to here!" ROME. VIGNETTE. From a Drawing by J. D. Harding. "But lo! the dome-the vast and wondrous dome, But thou, of altars old or temples new, Of earthly structures, in his honour piled, Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty- all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship." Childe Harold, canto iv. st. 153, 154. THIS view of St. Peter's is taken from the gardens above the Borgo di S. Spirito, whence the enormous mass of this stupendous structure is seen to great |