urries us along with a breathless expectancy that gives it
a conspicuous place among his minor efforts. The passage about the howling
of the wolves, and the fever faint of the victim, is as graphic as
anything in Burns--

The skies spun like a mighty wheel,
I saw the trees like drunkards reel.

In the May or June of 1818 Byron's little daughter, Allegra, had been sent
from England, under the care of a Swiss nurse too young to undertake her
management in such trying circumstances, and after four months of anxiety
he placed her in charge of Mrs. Hoppner. In the course of this and the
next year there are frequent allusions to the child, all, save one which
records a mere affectation of indifference, full of affectionate
solicitude. In June, 1819, he writes, "Her temper and her ways, Mr.
Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features; she will make, in
that case, a manageable young lady." Later he talks of her as "flourishing
like a pomegranate blossom." In March, 1820, we have another reference.
"Allegra is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as ravenous
as a vulture; health good, to judge by the complexion, temper tolerable,
but for vanity and pertinacity. She thinks herself handsome, and will do
as she pleases." In May he refers to having received a letter from her
mother, but gives no details. In the following year, with the approval of
the Shelleys then at Pisa, he placed her for education in the convent of
Cavalli Bagni in the Romagna. "I have," he writes to Hoppner, who had
thought of having her boarded in Switzerland, "neither spared care,
kindness, nor expense, since the child was sent to me. The people may say
what they please. I must content myself with not deserving, in this
instance, that they should speak ill. The place is a _country_ town, in a
good air, and less liable to objections of every kind. It has always
appeared to me that the moral defect in Italy does _not_ proceed from a
_conventual_ education; because, to my certain knowledge, they come out of
their convents innocent, even to ignorance of moral evil; but to the state
of society into which they are directly plunged on coming out of it. It is
like educating an infant on a mountain top, and then taking him to the
sea, and throwing him into it, and desiring him to swim." Elsewhere he
says, "I by no means intend to give a natural child an English education,
because, with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settlement wou