ld
be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education, and a portion
of 5000_l_. or 6000_l_. (his will leaving her 5000_l_., on condition that
she should not marry an Englishman, is here explained and justified), she
might, and may, marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a
pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that
she should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as the best religion, as
it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity." It
only remains to add that, when he heard that the child had fallen ill of
fever in 1822, Byron was almost speechless with agitation, and, on the
news of her death, which took place April 22nd, he seemed at first utterly
prostrated. Next day he said, "Allegra is dead; she is more fortunate than
we. It is God's will, let us mention it no more." Her remains rest beneath
the elm-tree at Harrow which her father used to haunt in boyhood, with the
date of birth and death, and the scripture--

I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.

The most interesting of the visits paid to Byron during the period of his
life at Venice was that of Shelley, who, leaving his wife and children at
Bagni di Lucca, came to see him in August, 1818. He arrived late, in the
midst of a thunderstorm; and next day they sailed to the Lido, and rode
together along the sands. The attitude of the two poets towards each other
is curious; the comparatively shrewd man of the world often relied on the
idealist for guidance and help in practical matters, admired his courage
and independence, spoke of him invariably as the best of men, but never
paid a sufficiently warm tribute in public to his work. Shelley, on the
other hand, certainly the most modest of great poets, contemplates Byron
in the fixed attitude of a literary worshipper.

The introduction to _Julian and Maddalo_, directly suggested by this
visit, under the slight veil of a change in the name, gives a summary of
the view of his friend's character which he continued to entertain. "He is
a person of the most consummate genius, and capable if he would direct his
energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country.
But it is his weakness to be proud; he derives, from a comparison of his
own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an
intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and
his powers are incomparably grea