still accepts all with meek, unquestioning, uncomplaining devotion. He
tears her from her children; he treats her with personal abuse; he
repudiates her,--sends her out to nakedness and poverty; he installs
another mistress in his house, and sends for the first to be her handmaid
and his own: and all this the meek saint accepts in the words of Milton,--

'My guide and head,
What thou hast said is just and right.'

Accordingly, Miss Martineau tells us that when Campbell's defence came
out, coupled with a note from Lady Byron,--

'The first obvious remark was, that there was no real disclosure; and
the whole affair had the appearance of a desire, on the part of Lady
Byron, to exculpate herself, while yet no adequate information was
given. Many, who had regarded her with favour till then, gave her up
so far as to believe that feminine weakness had prevailed at last.'

The saint had fallen from her pedestal! She had shown a human frailty!
Quite evidently she is not a Griselda, but possessed with a shocking
desire to exculpate herself and her friends.

Is it, then, only to slandered men that the privilege belongs of desiring
to exculpate themselves and their families and their friends from unjust
censure?

Lord Byron had made it a life-long object to vilify and defame his wife.
He had used for that one particular purpose every talent that he
possessed. He had left it as a last charge to Moore to pursue the
warfare after death, which Moore had done to some purpose; and
Christopher North had informed Lady Byron that her private affairs were
discussed, not only with the whisky-toddy of the Noctes Club, but in
every drawing-room in May Fair; and declared that the 'Dear Duck' letter,
and various other matters, must be explained, and urged somebody to
speak; and then, when Campbell does speak with all the energy of a real
gentleman, a general outcry and an indiscriminate melee is the result.

The world, with its usual injustice, insisted on attributing Campbell's
defence to Lady Byron.

The reasons for this seemed to be, first, that Campbell states that he
did not ask Lady Byron's leave, and that she did not authorise him to
defend her; and, second, that, having asked some explanations from her,
he prints a note in which she declines to give any.

We know not how a lady could more gently yet firmly decline to make a
gentleman her confidant than in this published note of Lady Byron; and
yet, to