oint.

'But it is also clear, that if there be those who persist in refusing
God's love, who choose to dash themselves for ever against the
inflexible laws of the universe, such souls must for ever suffer.

'There may be souls who hate purity because it reveals their vileness;
who refuse God's love, and prefer eternal conflict with it. For such
there can be no peace. Even in this life, we see those whom the
purest self-devoting love only inflames to madness; and we have only
to suppose an eternal persistence in this to suppose eternal misery.

'But on this subject we can only leave all reverently in the hands of
that Being whose almighty power is "declared chiefly in showing
mercy."'

CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION.

In leaving this subject, I have an appeal to make to the men, and more
especially to the women, who have been my readers.

In justice to Lady Byron, it must be remembered that this publication of
her story is not her act, but mine. I trust you have already conceded,
that, in so severe and peculiar a trial, she had a right to be understood
fully by her immediate circle of friends, and to seek of them counsel in
view of the moral questions to which such very exceptional circumstances
must have given rise. Her communication to me was not an address to the
public: it was a statement of the case for advice. True, by leaving the
whole, unguarded by pledge or promise, it left discretionary power with
me to use it if needful.

You, my sisters, are to judge whether the accusation laid against Lady
Byron by the 'Blackwood,' in 1869, was not of so barbarous a nature as to
justify my producing the truth I held in my hands in reply.

The 'Blackwood' claimed a right to re-open the subject because it was not
a private but a public matter. It claimed that Lord Byron's unfortunate
marriage might have changed not only his own destiny, but that of all
England. It suggested, that, but for this, instead of wearing out his
life in vice, and corrupting society by impure poetry, he might, at this
day, have been leading the counsels of the State, and helping the onward
movements of the world. Then it directly charged Lady Byron with meanly
forsaking her husband in a time of worldly misfortune; with fabricating a
destructive accusation of crime against him, and confirming this
accusation by years of persistent silence more guilty than open
assertion.

It has been alleged, that, eve