have been assured of pardon, his living faith in moral duty, and
love of virtue ("I love the virtues that I cannot claim"), would have
conquered every temptation. Judge, then, how I must hate the creed
that made him see God as an Avenger, and not as a Father! My own
impressions were just the reverse, but could have but little weight;
and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts from that fixed idea
with which he connected his personal peculiarity as a stamp. Instead
of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt convinced that
every blessing would be turned into a curse to him . . . "The worst of
it is, I do believe," he said. I, like all connected with him, was
broken against the rock of predestination. I may be pardoned for my
frequent reference to the sentiment (expressed by him), that I was
only sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy.'

In this letter we have the heart, not of the wife, but of the mother,--the
love that searches everywhere for extenuations of the guilt it is forced
to confess.

That Lady Byron was not alone in ascribing such results to the doctrines
of Calvinism, in certain cases, appears from the language of the Thirty-
nine Articles, which says:--

'As the godly consideration of predestination, and our election in
Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly
persons, and such as feel in themselves the workings of the spirit of
Christ; . . . so, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the spirit
of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's
predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth
thrust them either into desperation, or into recklessness of most
unclean living,--no less perilous than desperation.'

Lord Byron's life is an exact commentary on these words, which passed
under the revision of Calvin himself.

The whole tone of this letter shows not only that Lady Byron never lost
her deep interest in her husband, but that it was by this experience that
all her religious ideas were modified. There is another of these letters
in which she thus speaks of her husband's writings and character:--

'The author of the article on "Goethe" appears to me to have the mind
which could dispel the illusion about another poet, without
depreciating his claims . . . to the truest inspiration.

'Who has sought to distinguish between the