wever, neither his eagerness nor his efforts for the accomplishment
of this sole personal object of his ambition ever relaxed a single
instant. To whatever little glory was to be won by the attack upon
Lepanto, he looked forward as his only reward for all the sacrifices
he was making. In his conversations with Count Gamba on the subject,
"though he joked a good deal," says this gentleman, "about his post
of 'Archistrategos,' or Commander in Chief, it was plain that the
romance and the peril of the undertaking were great allurements to
him." When we combine, indeed, his determination to stand, at all
hazards, by the cause, with the very faint hopes his sagacious mind
would let him indulge as to his power of serving it, I have little
doubt that the "soldier's grave" which, in his own beautiful verses,
he marked out for himself, was no idle dream of poetry; but that, on
the contrary, his "wish was father to the thought," and that to an
honourable death, in some such achievement as that of storming
Lepanto, he looked forward, not only as the sole means of redeeming
worthily the great pledge he had now given, but as the most signal
and lasting service that a name like his,--echoed, as it would then
be, among the watch-words of Liberty, from age to age,--could
bequeath to her cause.

In the midst of these cares he was much gratified by the receipt of a
letter from an old friend of his, Andrea Londo, whom he had made
acquaintance with in his early travels in 1809, and who was at that
period a rich proprietor, under the Turks, in the Morca.[1] This
patriotic Greek was one of the foremost to raise the standard of the
Cross; and at the present moment stood distinguished among the
supporters of the Legislative Body and of the new national
Government. The following is a translation of Lord Byron's answer to
his letter.

[Footnote 1: This brave Moriote, when Lord Byron first knew him, was
particularly boyish in his aspect and manners, but still cherished,
under this exterior, a mature spirit of patriotism which occasionally
broke forth; and the noble poet used to relate that, one day, while
they were playing at draughts together, on the name of Riga being
pronounced, Londo leaped from the table, and clapping violently his
hands, began singing the famous song of that ill-fated patriot:--

"Sons of the Greeks, arise!
The glorious hour's gone forth."]

LETTER 542. TO LONDO.

"Dear Friend,

"The sight of your handwriting