ts, and her perfect knowledge of the
matter, I considered her judgment on this point decisive.

I told her that I would take the subject into consideration, and give my
opinion in a few days. That night, after my sister and myself had
retired to our own apartment, I related to her the whole history, and we
spent the night in talking of it. I was powerfully impressed with the
justice and propriety of an immediate disclosure; while she, on the
contrary, represented the painful consequences that would probably come
upon Lady Byron from taking such a step.

Before we parted the next day, I requested Lady Byron to give me some
memoranda of such dates and outlines of the general story as would enable
me better to keep it in its connection; which she did.

On giving me the paper, Lady Byron requested me to return it to her when
it had ceased to be of use to me for the purpose indicated.

Accordingly, a day or two after, I enclosed it to her in a hasty note, as
I was then leaving London for Paris, and had not yet had time fully to
consider the subject.

On reviewing my note, I can recall that then the whole history appeared
to me like one of those singular cases where unnatural impulses to vice
are the result of a taint of constitutional insanity. This has always
seemed to me the only way of accounting for instances of utterly
motiveless and abnormal wickedness and cruelty. These my first
impressions were expressed in the hasty note written at the time:--

'LONDON, Nov. 5, 1856.

'DEAREST FRIEND,--I return these. They have held mine eyes waking!
How strange! how unaccountable! Have you ever subjected the facts to
the judgment of a medical man learned in nervous pathology?

'Is it not insanity?

"Great wits to madness nearly are allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

'But my purpose to-night is not to write you fully what I think of
this matter. I am going to write to you from Paris more at leisure.'

The rest of the letter was taken up in the final details of a charity in
which Lady Byron had been engaged with me in assisting an unfortunate
artist. It concludes thus:--

'I write now in all haste, en route for Paris. As to America, all is
not lost yet. {168} Farewell! I love you, my dear friend, as never
before, with an intense feeling I cannot easily express. God bless
you!

'H. B