of
survivors ought to relate, in the first place, to the fair fame of the
dead; and the feelings of the dead, having been duly respected during
life, merge after death into the general beauty of the self-sacrificing
character which would not utter the word by which the adverse judgment
of the world might have been reversed in a moment. While, at this day,
she is regarded as the cause of her husband's sins, by her coldness,
formality, and what not,--fidelity and love to her memory absolutely
require, not fresh disclosures of a private character, but a new
presentment of the evidence long ago given to the world by herself and
by her husband's very partial biographer. This is what I have done,
after thirty years more of life have proved the quality of her mind and
heart.

As she loved early, she loved steadily and forever. It was through that
love that her magnanimity was so transcendent. When Lord Byron was
dying, he said to his confidential servant, Fletcher, "Go to Lady
Byron,--you will see her, and say"----and here his voice faltered, and
for nearly twenty minutes he muttered words which it was impossible to
catch. The man was obliged to tell him that he had not understood a
syllable. Byron's distress was great; but, as he said, it was too late.
Fletcher, on his return to England, did "go to Lady Byron," and did
see her: but she could only pace the room in uncontrollable agitation,
striving to obtain voice to ask the questions which were surging in her
heart. She could not speak, and he was obliged to leave her. To those
with whom she conversed freely, and to whom she wrote familiarly, it
was strangely interesting to hear, or to read, lines and phrases from
Byron's poems dropped, like native speech, from her tongue or her pen.
Those well-remembered lines or phrases seemed new, and were wonderfully
moving, when coming from her to whom they must have been so much more
than to any one else. How she surmounted such acts as the publication of
"Fare thee well!" and certain others of his safe appeals to the public,
no one could exactly understand. That she forgave them, and loved him to
the end, is enough for us to know; for our interest is in the greatness
of her heart, and not in the littleness of his.

Her life thenceforth was one of unremitting bounty to society,
administered with as much skill and prudence as benevolence. As we
have seen, her parents died a few years after her return to them for
protection. She lived