g the blade, was heard to say, in an under voice, "I
should like to know how a person feels after committing a murder!" In
this startling speech we may detect, I think, the germ of his future
Giaours and Laras. This intense _wish_ to explore the dark workings of
the passions was what, with the aid of imagination, at length
generated the _power_; and that faculty which entitled him afterwards
to be so truly styled "the searcher of dark bosoms," may be traced to,
perhaps, its earliest stirrings in the sort of feeling that produced
these words.

On their approaching the island of Zea, he expressed a wish to be put
on shore. Accordingly, having taken leave of his companions, he was
landed upon this small island, with two Albanians, a Tartar, and one
English servant; and in one of his manuscripts he has himself
described the proud, solitary feeling with which he stood to see the
ship sail swiftly away--leaving him there, in a land of strangers
alone.

A few days after, he addressed the following letters to Mrs. Byron
from Athens.

LETTER 46.

TO MRS. BYRON.

"Athens, July 25. 1810.

"Dear Mother,

"I have arrived here in four days from Constantinople, which is
considered as singularly quick, particularly for the season of the
year. You northern gentry can have no conception of a Greek summer;
which, however, is a perfect frost compared with Malta and Gibraltar,
where I reposed myself in the shade last year, after a gentle gallop
of four hundred miles, without intermission, through Portugal and
Spain. You see, by my date, that I am at Athens again, a place which I
think I prefer, upon the whole, to any I have seen.

"My next movement is to-morrow into the Morea, where I shall probably
remain a month or two, and then return to winter here, if I do not
change my plans, which, however, are very variable, as you may
suppose; but none of them verge to England.

"The Marquis of Sligo, my old fellow-collegian, is here, and wishes to
accompany me into the Morea. We shall go together for that purpose.
Lord S. will afterwards pursue his way to the capital; and Lord B.,
having seen all the wonders in that quarter, will let you know what he
does next, of which at present he is not quite certain. Malta is my
perpetual post-office, from which my letters are forwarded to all
parts of the habitable globe:--by the by, I have now been in Asia,
Africa, and the east of Europe, and, indeed, made the most of my time,
without hurr