had just dug out
three or four of their maimed companions, stood resting themselves
unconcernedly, as if nothing more was required of them; and to Lord
Byron's enquiry whether there were not still some other persons below
the earth, answered coolly that "they did not know, but believed that
there were." Enraged at this brutal indifference, he sprang from his
horse, and seizing a spade himself, began to dig with all his
strength; but it was not till after being threatened with the
horsewhip that any of the peasants could be brought to follow his
example. "I was not present at this scene myself," says Colonel
Napier, in the Notices with which he has favoured me, "but was told
that Lord Byron's attention seemed quite absorbed in the study of the
faces and gesticulations of those whose friends were missing. The
sorrow of the Greeks is, in appearance, very frantic, and they shriek
and howl, as in Ireland.

It was in alluding to the above incident that the noble poet is
stated to have said that he had come out to the Islands prejudiced
against Sir T. Maitland's government of the Greeks: "but," he added,
"I have now changed my opinion. They are such barbarians, that if I
had the government of them, I would pave these very roads with them."

While residing at Metaxata, he received an account of the illness of
his daughter Ada, which "made him anxious and melancholy (says Count
Gamba) for several days." Her indisposition he understood to have
been caused by a determination of blood to the head; and on his
remarking to Dr. Kennedy, as curious, that it was a complaint to
which he himself was subject, the physician replied, that he should
have been inclined to infer so, not only from his habits of intense
and irregular study, but from the present state of his eyes,--the
right eye appearing to be inflamed. I have mentioned this latter
circumstance as perhaps justifying the inference that there was in
Lord Byron's state of health at this moment a predisposition to the
complaint of which he afterwards died. To Dr. Kennedy he spoke
frequently of his wife and daughter, expressing the Strongest
affection for the latter, and respect towards the former, and while
declaring as usual his perfect ignorance of the causes of the
separation, professing himself fully disposed to welcome any prospect
of reconcilement.

The anxiety with which, at all periods of his life, but particularly
at the present, he sought to repel the notion that, excep