eyes, equivalent to concession,
they became, from thenceforward, most cordial friends. In recalling
some recollections of this period in his "Memoranda," after relating
the circumstance of his being caught bathing by an English party at
Sunium, he added, "This was the beginning of the most delightful
acquaintance which I formed in Greece." He then went on to assure Mr.
Bruce, if ever those pages should meet his eyes, that the days they
had passed together at Athens were remembered by him with pleasure.

During this period of his stay in Greece, we find him forming one of
those extraordinary friendships,--if attachment to persons so inferior
to himself can be called by that name,--of which I have already
mentioned two or three instances in his younger days, and in which the
pride of being a protector, and the pleasure of exciting gratitude,
seem to have constituted to his mind the chief, pervading charm. The
person, whom he now adopted in this manner, and from similar feelings
to those which had inspired his early attachments to the cottage-boy
near Newstead, and the young chorister at Cambridge, was a Greek
youth, named Nicolo Giraud, the son, I believe, of a widow lady, in
whose house the artist Lusieri lodged. In this young man he appears to
have taken the most lively, and even brotherly, interest;--so much so,
as not only to have presented to him, on their parting, at Malta, a
considerable sum of money, but to have subsequently designed for him,
as the reader will learn, a still more munificent, as well as
permanent, provision.

Though he occasionally made excursions through Attica and the Morea,
his head-quarters were fixed at Athens, where he had taken lodgings in
a Franciscan convent, and, in the intervals of his tours, employed
himself in collecting materials for those notices on the state of
modern Greece which he has appended to the second Canto of Childe
Harold. In this retreat, also, as if in utter defiance of the "genius
loci," he wrote his "Hints from Horace,"--a Satire which, impregnated
as it is with London life from beginning to end, bears the date,
"Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 12. 1811."

From the few remaining letters addressed to his mother, I shall
content myself with selecting the two following:--

LETTER 49.

TO MRS. BYRON.

"Athens, January 14, 1811.

"My dear Madam,

"I seize an occasion to write as usual, shortly, but frequently, as
the arrival of letters, where there exists