very luxury, at a less expense than a common
college life in England, will always be a country to me; and such are
in fact the shores of the Archipelago. This then is the
alternative--if I preserve Newstead, I return; if I sell it, I stay
away. I have had no letters since yours of June, but I have written
several times, and shall continue, as usual, on the same plan.

Believe me, yours ever,

BYRON.

"P.S.--I shall most likely see you in the course of the summer, but,
of course, at such a distance, I cannot specify any particular
month." The voyage to Egypt, which he appears from this letter to
have contemplated, was, probably for want of the expected remittances,
relinquished; and, on the 3d of June, he set sail from Malta, in the
Volage frigate, for England, having, during his short stay at Malta,
suffered a severe attack of the tertian fever. The feelings with which
he returned home may be collected from the following melancholy
letters.

LETTER 51.

TO MR. HODGSON.

"Volage frigate, at sea, June 29. 1811.

"In a week, with a fair wind, we shall be at Portsmouth, and on the 2d
of July, I shall have completed (to a day) two years of peregrination,
from which I am returning with as little emotion as I set out. I
think, upon the whole, I was more grieved at leaving Greece than
England, which I am impatient to see, simply because I am tired of a
long voyage.

"Indeed, my prospects are not very pleasant. Embarrassed in my private
affairs, indifferent to public, solitary without the wish to be
social, with a body a little enfeebled by a succession of fevers, but
a spirit, I trust, yet unbroken, I am returning _home_ without a hope,
and almost without a desire. The first thing I shall have to encounter
will be a lawyer, the next a creditor, then colliers, farmers,
surveyors, and all the agreeable attachments to estates out of repair,
and contested coal-pits. In short, I am sick and sorry, and when I
have a little repaired my irreparable affairs, away I shall march,
either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East, where I can
at least have cloudless skies and a cessation from impertinence.

"I trust to meet, or see you, in town, or at Newstead, whenever you
can make it convenient--I suppose you are in love and in poetry as
usual. That husband, H. Drury, has never written to me, albeit I have
sent him more than one letter;--but I dare say the poor man has a
family, and of course all his cares are confi