ly vanquished, and perceived that
henceforth nothing but injury could come to any one who attempted to
speak for her.

She turned from the judgments of man and the fond and natural hopes of
human nature, to lose herself in sacred ministries to the downcast and
suffering. What nobler record for woman could there be than that which
Miss Martineau has given?

Particularly to be noted in Lady Byron was her peculiar interest in
reclaiming fallen women. Among her letters to Mrs. Prof. Follen, of
Cambridge, was one addressed to a society of ladies who had undertaken
this difficult work. It was full of heavenly wisdom and of a large and
tolerant charity. Fenelon truly says, it is only perfection that can
tolerate imperfection; and the very purity of Lady Byron's nature made
her most forbearing and most tender towards the weak and the guilty. This
letter, with all the rest of Lady Byron's, was returned to the hands of
her executors after her death. Its publication would greatly assist the
world in understanding the peculiarities of its writer's character.

Lady Byron passed to a higher life in 1860. {105} After her death, I
looked for the publication of her Memoir and Letters as the event that
should give her the same opportunity of being known and judged by her
life and writings that had been so freely accorded to Lord Byron.

She was, in her husband's estimation, a woman of genius. She was the
friend of many of the first men and women of her times, and corresponded
with them on topics of literature, morals, religion, and, above all, on
the benevolent and philanthropic movements of the day, whose principles
she had studied with acute observation, and in connection with which she
had acquired a large experience.

The knowledge of her, necessarily diffused by such a series of letters,
would have created in America a comprehension of her character, of itself
sufficient to wither a thousand slanders.

Such a Memoir was contemplated. Lady Byron's letters to Mrs. Follen were
asked for from Boston; and I was applied to by a person in England, who I
have recently learned is one of the existing trustees of Lady Byron's
papers, to furnish copies of her letters to me for the purpose of a
Memoir. Before I had time to have copies made, another letter came,
stating that the trustees had concluded that it was best not to publish
any Memoir of Lady Byron at all.

This left the character of Lady Byron in our American world prec