sition is it possible to understand their allusions." But the
mere fact that Mrs. Leigh remained on terms of intimacy and affection
with her brother, when he was under the ban of society, would expose her
to slander and injurious comment, "peril dreaded most in female eyes;"
whereas to other calumnies, if such there were, there could be no other
reference but silence, or an ecstasy of wrath and indignation.]

[ir]
_Thus to that heart did his its thoughts in absence pour_.--[MS.]
----_its absent feelings pour_.--[MS. erased.]

[306] {249} [Written on the Rhine bank, May 11, 1816.--MS. M.]

[is] {251} _A sigh for Marceau_----.--[MS.]

[307] [Marceau (_vide post_, note 2, p. 296) took part in crushing the
Vendean insurrection. If, as General Hoche asserts in his memoirs, six
hundred thousand fell in Vendee, Freedom's charter was not easily
overstepped.]

[308] {252} [Compare Gray's lines in _The Fatal Sisters_--

"Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darken'd air."]

[it] _And could the sleepless vultures_----.--[MS.]

[iu] _Rustic not rude, sublime yet not austere_.--[MS.]

[309] [Lines 8 and 9 may be cited as a crying instance of Byron's faulty
technique. The collocation of "awful" with "austere," followed by
"autumn" in the next line, recalls the afflictive assonance of "high
Hymettus," which occurs in the beautiful passage which he stole from
_The Curse of Minerva_ and prefixed to the third canto of _The Corsair_.
The sense of the passage is that, as in autumn, the golden mean between
summer and winter, the year is at its full, so in the varied scenery of
the Rhine there is a harmony of opposites, a consummation of beauty.]

[iv] {253}
_More mighty scenes may rise--more glaring shine_
_But none unite in one enchanted gaze_
_The fertile--fair--and soft--the glories of old days_.--[MS.]

[310] [The "negligently grand" may, perhaps, refer to the glories of old
days, now in a state of neglect, not to the unstudied grandeur of the
scene taken as a whole; but the phrase is loosely thrown out in order to
convey a general impression, "an attaching maze," an engaging attractive
combination of images, and must not be interrogated too closely.]

[iw] {254}
_Around in chrystal grandeur to where falls_
_The avalanche--the thunder-clouds of snow_.--[MS.]

[311] [Compare the opening lines of Coleridge's _Hymn before Sunrise in
the Valley of Chamouni_--

"Hast thou a cha