rld for the sake of vindicating his fame from
slanders and aspersions cast on him by his wife. The story of the
mistress versus wife may be summed up as follows:--

Lord Byron, the hero of the story, is represented as a human being
endowed with every natural charm, gift, and grace, who, by the one false
step of an unsuitable marriage, wrecked his whole life. A narrow-minded,
cold-hearted precisian, without sufficient intellect to comprehend his
genius, or heart to feel for his temptations, formed with him one of
those mere worldly marriages common in high life; and, finding that she
could not reduce him to the mathematical proprieties and conventional
rules of her own mode of life, suddenly, and without warning, abandoned
him in the most cruel and inexplicable manner.

It is alleged that she parted from him in apparent affection and good-
humour, wrote him a playful, confiding letter upon the way, but, after
reaching her father's house, suddenly, and without explanation, announced
to him that she would never see him again; that this sudden abandonment
drew down upon him a perfect storm of scandalous stories, which his wife
never contradicted; that she never in any way or shape stated what the
exact reasons for her departure had been, and thus silently gave scope to
all the malice of thousands of enemies. The sensitive victim was
actually driven from England, his home broken up, and he doomed to be a
lonely wanderer on foreign shores.

In Italy, under bluer skies, and among a gentler people, with more
tolerant modes of judgment, the authoress intimates that he found peace
and consolation. A lovely young Italian countess falls in love with him,
and, breaking her family ties for his sake, devotes herself to him; and,
in blissful retirement with her, he finds at last that domestic life for
which he was so fitted.

Soothed, calmed, and refreshed, he writes 'Don Juan,' which the world is
at this late hour informed was a poem with a high moral purpose, designed
to be a practical illustration of the doctrine of total depravity among
young gentlemen in high life.

Under the elevating influence of love, he rises at last to higher realms
of moral excellence, and resolves to devote the rest of his life to some
noble and heroic purpose; becomes the saviour of Greece; and dies
untimely, leaving a nation to mourn his loss.

The authoress dwells with a peculiar bitterness on Lady Byron's entire
silence during all these years,