s is observable in the still grander
operations of nature, where individuals are as nothing in the tide of
events,--that such was his, at once, philosophic and melancholy view
of his own sacrifices, I have, I trust, clearly shown. But that,
during this short period of action, he did not do well and wisely all
that man could achieve in the time, and under the circumstances, is
an assertion which the noble facts here recorded fully and
triumphantly disprove. He knew that, placed as he was, his measures,
to be wise, must be prospective, and from the nature of the seeds
thus sown by him, the benefits that were to be expected must be
judged. To reconcile the rude chiefs to the Government and to each
other;--to infuse a spirit of humanity, by his example, into their
warfare;--to prepare the way for the employment of the expected Loan,
in a manner most calculated to call forth the resources of the
country;--to put the fortifications of Missolonghi in such a state of
repair as might, and eventually _did_, render it proof against the
besieger;--to prevent those infractions of neutrality, so tempting to
the Greeks, which brought their Government in collision with the
Ionian authorities[2], and to restrain all such license of the Press
as might indispose the Courts of Europe to their cause:--such were
the important objects which he had proposed to himself to accomplish,
and towards which, in this brief interval, and in the midst of such
dissensions and hinderances, he had already made considerable and
most promising progress. But it would be unjust to close even here
the bright catalogue of his services. It is, after all, _not_ with
the span of mortal life that the good achieved by a name immortal
ends. The charm acts into the future,--it is an auxiliary through all
time; and the inspiring example of Byron, as a martyr of liberty, is
for ever freshly embalmed in his glory as a poet. From the period of
his attack in February he had been, from time to time, indisposed;
and, more than once, had complained of vertigos, which made him feel,
he said, as if intoxicated. He was also frequently affected with
nervous sensations, with shiverings and tremors, which, though
apparently the effects of excessive debility, he himself attributed
to fulness of habit. Proceeding upon this notion, he had, ever since
his arrival in Greece, abstained almost wholly from animal food, and
ate of little else but dry toast, vegetables, and cheese. With the
s