ject.

Every person with whom he became acquainted with any degree of intimacy
was made familiar with his side of the story. Moore's Biography is from
first to last, in its representations, founded upon Byron's
communicativeness, and Lady Byron's silence; and the world at last
settled down to believing that the account so often repeated, and never
contradicted, must be substantially a true one.

The true history of Lord and Lady Byron has long been perfectly
understood in many circles in England; but the facts were of a nature
that could not be made public. While there was a young daughter living
whose future might be prejudiced by its recital, and while there were
other persons on whom the disclosure of the real truth would have been
crushing as an avalanche, Lady Byron's only course was the perfect
silence in which she took refuge, and those sublime works of charity and
mercy to which she consecrated her blighted early life.

But the time is now come when the truth may be told. All the actors in
the scene have disappeared from the stage of mortal existence, and
passed, let us have faith to hope, into a world where they would desire
to expiate their faults by a late publication of the truth.

No person in England, we think, would as yet take the responsibility of
relating the true history which is to clear Lady Byron's memory; but, by
a singular concurrence of circumstances, all the facts of the case, in
the most undeniable and authentic form, were at one time placed in the
hands of the writer of this sketch, with authority to make such use of
them as she should judge best. Had this melancholy history been allowed
to sleep, no public use would have been made of them; but the appearance
of a popular attack on the character of Lady Byron calls for a
vindication, and the true story of her married life will therefore now be
related.

Lord Byron has described in one of his letters the impression left upon
his mind by a young person whom he met one evening in society, and who
attracted his attention by the simplicity of her dress, and a certain air
of singular purity and calmness with which she surveyed the scene around
her.

On inquiry, he was told that this young person was Miss Milbanke, an only
child, and one of the largest heiresses in England.

Lord Byron was fond of idealising his experiences in poetry; and the
friends of Lady Byron had no difficulty in recognising the portrait of
Lady Byron, as she appear