hen
they were bathing together in the Gulf of Lepanto, he referred to this
promise, and, pointing to his naked leg and foot, exclaimed--"Look
there!--it is to her false delicacy at my birth I owe that deformity;
and yet, as long as I can remember, she has never ceased to taunt and
reproach me with it. Even a few days before we parted, for the last
time, on my leaving England, she, in one of her fits of passion,
uttered an imprecation upon me, praying that I might prove as ill
formed in mind as I am in body!" His look and manner, in relating this
frightful circumstance, can be conceived only by those who have ever
seen him in a similar state of excitement.

The little value he had for those relics of ancient art, in pursuit of
which he saw all his classic fellow-travellers so ardent, was, like
every thing he ever thought or felt, unreservedly avowed by him. Lord
Sligo having it in contemplation to expend some money in digging for
antiquities, Lord Byron, in offering to act as his agent, and to see
the money, at least, honestly applied, said--"You may safely trust
_me_--I am no dilettante. Your connoisseurs are all thieves; but I
care too little for these things ever to steal them."

The system of thinning himself, which he had begun before he left
England, was continued still more rigidly abroad. While at Athens, he
took the hot bath for this purpose, three times a week,--his usual
drink being vinegar and water, and his food seldom more than a little
rice.

Among the persons, besides Lord Sligo, whom he saw most of at this
time, were Lady Hester Stanhope and Mr. Bruce. One of the first
objects, indeed, that met the eyes of these two distinguished
travellers, on their approaching the coast of Attica, was Lord Byron,
disporting in his favourite element under the rocks of Cape Colonna.
They were afterwards made acquainted with each other by Lord Sligo;
and it was in the course, I believe, of their first interview, at his
table, that Lady Hester, with that lively eloquence for which she is
so remarkable, took the poet briskly to task for the depreciating
opinion, which, as she understood, he entertained of all female
intellect. Being but little inclined, were he even able, to sustain
such a heresy, against one who was in her own person such an
irresistible refutation of it, Lord Byron had no other refuge from the
fair orator's arguments than in assent and silence; and this well-bred
deference being, in a sensible woman's