as the most aggravated form of
persecution and injury. She informs the world that Lord Byron wrote his
Autobiography with the purpose of giving a fair statement of the exact
truth in the whole matter; and that Lady Byron bought up the manuscript
of the publisher, and insisted on its being destroyed, unread; thus
inflexibly depriving her husband of his last chance of a hearing before
the tribunal of the public.

As a result of this silent persistent cruelty on the part of a cold,
correct, narrow-minded woman, the character of Lord Byron has been
misunderstood, and his name transmitted to after-ages clouded with
aspersions and accusations which it is the object of this book to remove.

* * * * *

Such is the story of Lord Byron's mistress,--a story which is going the
length of this American continent, and rousing up new sympathy with the
poet, and doing its best to bring the youth of America once more under
the power of that brilliant, seductive genius, from which it was hoped
they had escaped. Already we are seeing it revamped in
magazine-articles, which take up the slanders of the paramour and enlarge
on them, and wax eloquent in denunciation of the marble-hearted
insensible wife.

All this while, it does not appear to occur to the thousands of
unreflecting readers that they are listening merely to the story of Lord
Byron's mistress, and of Lord Byron; and that, even by their own showing,
their heaviest accusation against Lady Byron is that she has not spoken
at all. Her story has never been told.

For many years after the rupture between Lord Byron and his wife, that
poet's personality, fate, and happiness had an interest for the whole
civilized world, which, we will venture to say, was unparalleled. It is
within the writer's recollection, how, in the obscure mountain-town where
she spent her early days, Lord Byron's separation from his wife was, for
a season, the all-engrossing topic.

She remembers hearing her father recount at the breakfast-table the facts
as they were given in the public papers, together with his own
suppositions and theories of the causes.

Lord Byron's 'Fare thee well,' addressed to Lady Byron, was set to music,
and sung with tears by young school-girls, even in this distant America.

Madame de Stael said of this appeal, that she was sure it would have
drawn her at once to his heart and his arms; she could have forgiven
everything: and so said all the young ladies all over the world