actually have no society (what we would call so), as you may see by their comedies; they have no real comedy, not even in Goldini, and that it is because they have no society to draw it from.

"Their conversazioni are not society at all. They go to the theatre to talk, and into company to hold their tongues. The women sit in a circle, and the men gather into groups, or they play at dreary faro, or 'lotto reale,' for small sums. Their academie are concerts like our own, with better music and more form. Their best things are the carnival balls and masquerades, when every body runs mad for six weeks. After their dinners and suppers they make extempore verses, and buffoon one another; but it is in a humour which you would not enter into, ye of the north. "In their houses it is better. I should know something of the matter, having had a pretty general experience among their women, from the fisherman's wife up to the Nobil Dama, whom I serve. Their system has its rules, and its fitness, and its decorums, so as to be reduced to a kind of discipline or game at hearts, which admits few deviations, unless you wish to lose it. They are extremely tenacious, and jealous as furies, not permitting their lovers even to marry, if they can help it, and keeping them always close to them in public as in private, whenever they can. In short, they transfer marriage to adul tery, and strike the not out of that commandment. The reason is, that they marry for their parents, and love for themselves. They exact fidelity from a lover as a debt of honour, while they pay the husband as a tradesman, that is, not at all. You hear a person's character, male or female, canvassed not as depending on their conduct to their husbands or wives, but to their mistress or lover. If I wrote a quarto, I don't know that I could do more than amplify what I have here noted. It is to be observed that while they do all this, the greatest outward respect is to be paid to the husband, not only by the ladies, but by their Serventi particularly if the husband serves no one himself (which is not often the case, however); so that you would often suppose them relations, the Servente making the figure of one adopted into the family. Sometimes the ladies run a little restive and elope, or divide, or make a scene; but this is at starting, generally, when they know no better, or when they fall in love with a foreigner, or some such anomaly, and is always reckoned unnecessary and extravagant."

Of Leigh Hunt Lord Byron writes: "Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious rudeness?

actually cement a sort of connection which you strove to prevent, and which, had thẻ Hunts prospered, would not, in all probability have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money, and the usual et cetera. My original moë tives I already explained (in the letter which you thought proper to show): they are the true ones, and I abide by them, as I tell you, and I told Leigh Hunt, when he questioned me on the subject of that letter. He was violently hurt, and never will forgive me at bottom; but I can't help that, I never meant to make a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer the plain truth: and f confess I did not see any thing in the letter to hurt him, unless I said he was a bore,' which I don't remember. Had their journal gone on well, and I could have aided to make it better for them, I should then have left them, after my safe pilotage off a lee shore, to make a prosperous voyage by themselves. As it is, I can't and would not, if I could,leave them among the breakers. As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly ever; but I think him a good principled and able man, and must do as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in, but I have lived in three or four; but none of them like his Keats and kangaroo terra incognita. Alas! poor Shelly! how we would have laughed had he lived, and how we used to laugh now and then at various things which are grave in the suburbs!"

"Of Hunt I see little-once a month or so, and then on his own busines, ges nerally. You may easily suppose that I know too little of Hampstead and his satellites to have much communion or community with him. My whole present re lation to him arose from Shelley's unexpected wreck. You would not have had me leave him in the street with his family; would you? and as to the other plan you mention, you forget how it would humiliate him—that his writings should be supposed to be dead weight! Think a moment→ he is perhaps the vainest man on earth at least his own friends say so pretty loudly ; and if he were in other circumstances I might be tempted to take him down a peg, but not now; it would be cruel. It is a cursed business; but neither the motive nor the means rest upon my conscience."

Leigh Hunt is also condemned out of the mouth of Mr. Shelley. We quote the letter because it shows that Boy-Philoso pher and Poet of Mystery in a most amia❤ ble light.

February 15, 1823.

"My Dear Lord Byron, "I enclose you a letter from Hunt, which annoys me on more than one account. You will observe the postscript, and you know me well enough to feel how painful a task is set me in commenting upon it. Hunt had urged me more than once to ask you to lend him this money. My answer consisted in sending him all I could spare, which I have now literally done. Your kindness in fitting up a part of your own house for his accommodation I sensibly felt, and willingly accepted from you on his part, but, believe me without the slightest intention of imposing, or, if I could help it, allowing to be imposed, any heavier task on your purse. As it has come to this, in spite of my exertions, I will not conceal from yon the low ebb of my own money affairs in the present moment, that is, my absolute incapacity of assisting Hunt farther. I do not think poor Hunt's promise to pay in a given time is worth much; but mine is less subject to uncertainty, and I should be happy to be responsible for any engagement he may have proposed to you. I am so much annoyed by this subject, that I hardly know what to write, and much less what to say and I have need of all your indulgence in judging both my feelings and expressions.

"I shall see you by and by,
Believe me,
"Yours most faithfully and sincerely,
"P. B. SHELLEY.'

The following passage in one of Lord Byron's letters, shows Mr. Hobhouse could have added much to the present volume:

"The papers to which I allude, in case of survivorship, are collections of letters, &c. since I was sixteen years old, contained in the trunks in the care of Mr. Hobhouse. This collection is at least doubled by those I have now here, all received since my last ostracism. To these I should wish the editor to have access, not for the purpose of abusing confidences, nor of hurting the feelings of correspondents diving, nor the meniories of the dead; but there are things which would do neither, that I have left unnoticed or unexplained, and which (like all such things) time only can permit to be noticed or explained, though some are to my credit. The task will of course require delicacy; but that will not be wanting, if Mr. Moore and Hobhouse survive me, and, I may add, yourself; and that you may all three do so is, I assure, you, my very sincere wish. I am not sure that long life is desirable for one of my temper, and constitutional de

pression of spirits, which of course I suppress in society, but which breaks out when alone, and in my writings, in spite of myself. It has been deepened perhaps, by some long-past events (1 do not allude to my marriage, &c.—on the contrary, that raised them by the persecution giving a fillip to my spirits); but I call it constitutional, as I have reason to think it. You know, or you do not know, that my maternal grandfather (a very clever man, and amiable, I am told), was strongly sus pected of suicide (he was found drowned in the Avon at Bath), and that another very near relative of the same branch took poison, and was merely saved by antidotes."

Of that mirror of the poet's own nature, "Don Juan," Mr. Moore thus speaks

"It was at this time, as the features, indeed, of the progeny itself would but too plainly indicate, that he conceived, and wrote some part of, his poem of "Don Juan ;”—and never did pages more faithfully and in many respects, lamentably, reflect every variety of feeling, and whim, and passion that, like the rack of autumn, swept across the author's mind in writing them. Nothing less, indeed, than that singular combination of attributes, which existed and were in full activity in his mind at this moment, could have suggested, or been capable of, the excution of such a work. The cool shrewdness of age, with the vivacity and glowing temperament of youth-the wit of a Voltaire with the sensibility of a Rousseau-the minute practical knowledge of the man of society, with the abstract, and self-con templative spirit of the poet-a susceptibility of all that is grandest and most affecting in human virtue, with a deep, withering experience of all that is most fatal to it-the two extremes, in short, of man's mixed and inconsistent nature, now rankly smelling of earth, now breathing of heaven-such was the strange assemblage of contrary elements, all meeting together in the same mind, and all brought to bear, in turn, upon the same task, from which alone could have sprung this extraordinary poem-the most powerful, and, in many respects, painful display of the versatility of genius that has ever been left for succeeding ages to wonder at and deplore.

The following are some hasty opinions, and miscellaneous scraps, collected from his letters:

"If I were asked to define what this gentlemanliness is, I should say that it is only to be defined by examples-of those who have it, and those who have it not. Iu life, I should say that most military men have it, and few nuval; that several men of rank have it, and few lawyers;

that it is more frequent among authors than divines (when they are not pedants); that fencing-masters have more of it than dancing-masters, and singers than players; and that (if it be not an Irishism to say so) it is far more generally diffused among women than among men. In poetry, as well as writing in general, it will never make entirely a poet or a poem; but neither poet nor poem will ever be good for any thing without it, It is the salt of society, and the seasoning of composition. Vulgarity is far worse than downright blackguardism; for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at times; while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, signifying nothing.' It does not depend upon low themes, or even low language, for Fielding revels in both;but is he ever vulgur? No. You see the man of education, the gentleman, and the scholar, sporting with his subject,-its master, not its slave. Your vulgar writer is always most vulgar the higher his subject; as the man who showed the mena gerie at Pidcock's was wont to say, 'This, gentlemen, is the Eagle of the Sun, from Archangel in Russia: the otterer it is, the igherer he flies.'

"Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,-worldly, social, amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious,-does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow-a fear of what is to come-a doubt of what is a retrospect to the past, lead ing to a prognostication of the future? (The best of prophets of the future is the Past.) Why is this? or these? I know not, except that on a pinnacle we are most susceptible of giddiness, and that we never fear falling, except from a precipice-the higher, the more awful, and the more sublime; and, therefore, I am not sure that Fear is not a pleasurable sensation; at least, Hope is; and what Hope is there with out a deep leaven of Fear? and what sensation is so delightful as Hope? and, if it were not for Hope, where would the Future be?-in hell. It is useless to say where the Present is, for most of us know: and as for the Past, what predominates in memory?-Hope baffled. Ergo, in all human affairs, it is Hope-Hope-Hope."

"I have been thinking over, the other day, on the various comparisons, good or evil, which I have seen published of myself in different journals, English and foreign. This was suggested to me by accidentally turning over a foreign one lately, for I have made it a rule latterly never to search for any thing of the kind, but not to avoid the perusal, if presented by chance. To begin, then, I have seen myself compared, personally or poetically, in English, French, German (as interpreted to me),

Italian and Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, ‘Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, an alabaster vase, lighted up within,? Satan, Shakspeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harle quin, the Clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit-maitre, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to the count in Beppo, to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, to Burns, to Savage, to Chat terton, to oft have I heard of thee, my Lord Biron,' in Shakspeare, to Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor, to-Alfieri, &c. &c.

"I forgot to mention a little anecdote of a different kind, I went over the Con stitution (the Commodore's flag ship), and saw among other things worthy of remark, a little boy born on board of her by a sail or's wife They had christened him “ Constitution Jones.' I, of course, approved the name; and the woman added, ? Ah, sir, if he turns out but half so good as his name.'

"Your first note was queer enough; but your two other letters, with Moore's and Gifford's opinions, set all right again. I told you before that I can never recast any thing. I am like the tiger, if I miss the first spriug, I go grumbling back to my jungle again; but if I do hit, it is crushing.

"With regard to what you say of retouching the Juans and the Hints, it is all very well; but I can't furbish. I am like the tiger (in poesy), if I miss the first spring, I go growling back to my jungle. There is no second; I can't correct, I can't and I won't. Nobody ever succeeds in it, great

or small.

"I recollect, however, that having been much hurt by Romilly's conduct (he hav ing a general retainer for me, had acted as adviser to the adversary, alleging, on being reminded of his retainer, that he had forgotten it, as his clerk had so many), I observed that some of those who were now eagerly laying the axe to my rooftree, might see their own shaken, and feel a portion of what they had inflicted.-His fell, and crushed him."

"I am aware of what you say of Otway: and am a very great admirer of his,-all except of that maudlin b-h of chaste lewdness and blubbering curiosity, Belvidera, whom I utterly despise, abhor, and detest. But the story of Marino Faliero is different, and 1 think, so much finer, that I wish Otway had taken it instead: the head conspiring against the body for refusal of redress for a real injury-jealousy,-treason,.. with the more fixed and

at once before the eye and beart. Two letters close with such coloured sketches as the following:

"Have you seen -'s book of poesy? and, if you have seen it, are you not delighted with it? And have you-1 really cannot go on. There is a pair of great black eyes looking over my shoulder, like the angel leaning over St. Matthew's, in the old frontispieces to the Evangelistsso that I must turn and auswer them instead of you. "Good night is four, and the Grand Canal, and I must to bed; George Philpot says, damme, it's life!'

or, rather, morning. It dawn gleams over the unshadows the Rialto. up all night; but, as it's life, though,

"Ever yours, 66 'B."

There are some exquisite pieces of poetry scattered in this second volume. We shall gather the choicest in our pages:

TO AUGUSTA.

My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same-
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny-

A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

The first were nothing-had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;
But other claims and other ties thou hast,
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
Recalling, as it lies beyoud redress;

Reversed for him our grandsire's + fate of yoreHe had no rest at sea nor I on shore.

If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks

Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,

I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,

The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox;

I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward. My whole life was a contest, since the day That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd The gift-a fate, or will, that walk'd astray; And I at times have found the struggle hard, And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay: But now I fain would for a time survive, If but to see what next can well arrive.

Kingdoms and empires in my little day I have outlived, and yet I am not old; And when I look on this, the petty spray Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away Something I know not what-does still uphold A spirit of slight patience;-not in vain, Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

Perhaps the workings of defiance stir Within me-or perhaps a cold despair, Brought on when ills habitually recurPerhaps a kinder clime, or purer air, (For even to this may change of soul refer, And with light armour we may learn to bear), Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not The chief companion of a calmer lot.

I feel almost at times as I have felt

In happy childhood-trees, and flowers, and brooks,

Which do remember me of where I dwelt
Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heart with recognition of their looks;
And even at moments I could think I see
Some living thing to love-but none like thee.