ive
tone, "Wilberforce!" Is not that Sherry all over?--and, to my mind,
excellent. Poor fellow, his very dregs are better than the "first
sprightly runnings" of others.

'My paper is full, and I have a grievous headache.

'P.S.--Lady B. is in full progress. Next month will bring to light
(with the aid of "Juno Lucina, fer opem," or rather opes, for the last
are most wanted) the tenth wonder of the world; Gil Blas being the
eighth, and he (my son's father) the ninth.'

Here we have a picture of the whole story,--Lady Byron within a month of
her confinement; her money being used to settle debts; her husband out at
a dinner-party, going through the usual course of such parties, able to
keep his legs and help Sheridan downstairs, and going home 'gloomy, and
savage to ferocity,' to his wife.

Four days after this (letter 229), we find that this dinner-party is not
an exceptional one, but one of a series: for he says, 'To-day I dine with
Kinnaird,--we are to have Sheridan and Colman again; and to-morrow, once
more, at Sir Gilbert Heathcote's.'

Afterward, in Venice, he reviews the state of his health, at this period
in London; and his account shows that his excesses in the vices of his
times had wrought effects on his sensitive, nervous organisation, very
different from what they might on the more phlegmatic constitutions of
ordinary Englishmen. In his journal, dated Venice, Feb. 2, 1821, he
says,--

'I have been considering what can be the reason why I always wake at a
certain hour in the morning, and always in very bad spirits,--I may
say, in actual despair and despondency, in all respects, even of that
which pleased me over night. In about an hour or two this goes off,
and I compose either to sleep again, or at least to quiet. In
England, five years ago, I had the same kind of hypochondria, but
accompanied with so violent a thirst, that I have drunk as many as
fifteen bottles of soda-water in one night, after going to bed, and
been still thirsty,--calculating, however, some lost from the bursting-
out and effervescence and overflowing of the soda-water in drawing the
corks, or striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty
impatience. At present, I have not the thirst; but the depression of
spirits is no less violent.'--Vol. v. p.96.

These extracts go to show what must have been the condition of the man
whom Lady Byron was called to rec