er part, the
interest continually increased; on his, the transient rise of better
feelings was choked and overgrown by the thorns of base unworthy
passions.

From the height at which he might have been happy as the husband of a
noble woman, he fell into the depths of a secret adulterous intrigue with
a blood relation, so near in consanguinity, that discovery must have been
utter ruin and expulsion from civilised society.

From henceforth, this damning guilty secret became the ruling force in
his life; holding him with a morbid fascination, yet filling him with
remorse and anguish, and insane dread of detection. Two years after his
refusal by Miss Milbanke, his various friends, seeing that for some cause
he was wretched, pressed marriage upon him.

Marriage has often been represented as the proper goal and terminus of a
wild and dissipated career; and it has been supposed to be the appointed
mission of good women to receive wandering prodigals, with all the rags
and disgraces of their old life upon them, and put rings on their hands,
and shoes on their feet, and introduce them, clothed and in their right
minds, to an honourable career in society.

Marriage was, therefore, universally recommended to Lord Byron by his
numerous friends and well-wishers; and so he determined to marry, and, in
an hour of reckless desperation, sat down and wrote proposals to two
ladies. One was declined: the other, which was accepted, was to Miss
Milbanke. The world knows well that he had the gift of expression, and
will not be surprised that he wrote a very beautiful letter, and that the
woman who had already learned to love him fell at once into the snare.

Her answer was a frank, outspoken avowal of her love for him, giving
herself to him heart and hand. The good in Lord Byron was not so utterly
obliterated that he could receive such a letter without emotion, or
practise such unfairness on a loving, trusting heart without pangs of
remorse. He had sent the letter in mere recklessness; he had not
seriously expected to be accepted; and the discovery of the treasure of
affection which he had secured was like a vision of lost heaven to a soul
in hell.

But, nevertheless, in his letters written about the engagement, there are
sufficient evidences that his self-love was flattered at the preference
accorded him by so superior a woman, and one who had been so much sought.
He mentions with an air of complacency that she has employed the la