and for no one else. A _picture_ is a different matter;--every body sits
for their picture;--but a bust looks like putting up pretensions to
permanency, and smacks something of a hankering for public fame rather
than private remembrance.

"Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently) I
comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom by
their firmness without excess; and, secondly, because these Trans-Atlantic
visits, 'few and-far between' make me feel as if talking with posterity
from the other side of the Styx. In a century or two, the new English and
Spanish Atlantides will be masters of the old countries, in all
probability, as Greece and Europe overcame their mother Asia in the older
or earlier ages, as they are called."

EXTRACT FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON, 1821.

"Ravenna, January 12th, 1821.

"I have found out the seal cut on Murray's letter. It is meant for Walter
Scott--or _Sir_ Walter--he is the first poet knighted since Sir Richard
Blackmore. But it does not do him justice. Scott's--particularly when he
recites---is a very intelligent countenance, and this seal says nothing.

"Scott is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are a
new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any--if not better
(only on an erroneous system)--and only ceased to be so popular, because
the vulgar learned were tired of hearing 'Aristides called the Just,' and
Scott the Best, and ostracised him.

"I like him, too, for his manliness of character, for the extreme
pleasantness of his conversation, and his good-nature towards myself,
personally. May he prosper!--for he deserves it. I know no reading to
which I fall with such alacrity as a work of W. Scott's. I shall give the
seal, with his bust on it, to Madame la Contesse G. this evening, who will
be curious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated.

"January 20th, 1821.

"To-morrow is my birthday--that is to say, at twelve o' the clock,
midnight, i.e. in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty and three
years of age!!!--and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having
lived so long, and to so little purpose.

"It is three minutes past twelve.--''Tis the middle of night by the castle
clock, and I am now thirty-three!

'Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume,
Labuntur anni;--'

but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might
have done.

"Through life