ufficient to prove that
Lady Byron never contemplated the use made of her name, and that her
descendants and representatives disclaim any countenance of Mrs. B.
Stowe's article; but it does not specifically meet Mrs. Stowe's
allegation, that Lady Byron, in conversing with her thirteen years ago,
affirmed the charge now before us. It remains open, therefore, to a
scandal-loving world, to credit the calumny through the advantage of this
flaw, involuntary, I believe, in the answer produced against it. My
object in addressing you is to supply that deficiency by proving that
what is now stated on Lady Byron's supposed authority is at variance, in
all respects, with what she stated immediately after the separation, when
everything was fresh in her memory in relation to the time during which,
according to Mrs. B. Stowe, she believed that Byron and his sister were
living together in guilt. I publish this evidence with reluctance, but
in obedience to that higher obligation of justice to the voiceless and
defenceless dead which bids me break through a reserve that otherwise I
should have held sacred. The Lady Byron of 1818 would, I am certain,
have sanctioned my doing so, had she foreseen the present unparalleled
occasion, and the bar that the conditions of her will present (as I infer
from Messrs Wharton and Fords' letter) against any fuller communication.
Calumnies such as the present sink deep and with rapidity into the public
mind, and are not easily eradicated. The fame of one of our greatest
poets, and that of the kindest and truest and most constant friend that
Byron ever had, is at stake; and it will not do to wait for revelations
from the fountain-head, which are not promised, and possibly may never
reach us.

The late Lady Anne Barnard, who died in 1825, a contemporary and friend
of Burke, Windham, Dundas, and a host of the wise and good of that
generation, and remembered in letters as the authoress of 'Auld Robin
Gray,' had known the late Lady Byron from infancy, and took a warm
interest in her; holding Lord Byron in corresponding repugnance, not to
say prejudice, in consequence of what she believed to be his harsh and
cruel treatment of her young friend. I transcribe the following
passages, and a letter from Lady Byron herself (written in 1818) from
ricordi, or private family memoirs, in Lady Anne's autograph, now before
me. I include the letter, because, although treating only in general
terms of the matter an