iews, what
was said and what was done in England?

That is a question we should be glad to have answered. Nothing was done
that ever reached us across the water.

And why was nothing done? Is this language of a kind to be passed over
in silence?

Was it no offence to the house of Wentworth to attack the pure character
of its late venerable head, and to brand her in her sacred grave with the
name of one of the vilest of criminals?

Might there not properly have been an indignant protest of family
solicitors against this insult to the person and character of the
Baroness Wentworth?

If virtue went for nothing, benevolence for nothing, a long life of
service to humanity for nothing, one would at least have thought, that,
in aristocratic countries, rank might have had its rights to decent
consideration, and its guardians to rebuke the violation of those rights.

We Americans understand little of the advantages of rank; but we did
understand that it secured certain decorums to people, both while living
and when in their graves. From Lady Byron's whole history, in life and
in death, it would appear that we were mistaken.

What a life was hers! Was ever a woman more evidently desirous of the
delicate and secluded privileges of womanhood, of the sacredness of
individual privacy? Was ever a woman so rudely dragged forth, and
exposed to the hardened, vulgar, and unfeeling gaze of mere
curiosity?--her maiden secrets of love thrown open to be handled by
roues; the sanctities of her marriage-chamber desecrated by leering
satyrs; her parents and best friends traduced and slandered, till one
indignant public protest was extorted from her, as by the rack,--a
protest which seems yet to quiver in every word with the indignation of
outraged womanly delicacy!

Then followed coarse blame and coarser comment,--blame for speaking at
all, and blame for not speaking more. One manly voice, raised for her in
honourable protest, was silenced and overborne by the universal roar of
ridicule and reprobation; and henceforth what refuge? Only this
remained: 'Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the
keeping of their souls to him as to a faithful Creator.'

Lady Byron turned to this refuge in silence, and filled up her life with
a noble record of charities and humanities. So pure was she, so
childlike, so artless, so loving, that those who knew her best, feel, to
this day, that a memorial of her is like the relic of