n,
the licentiousness of his poetry. After much controversy, it was
agreed to leave the decision of the question to a mode of divination,
not uncommon among the Persians, which consisted in opening the
poet's book at random and taking the first verses that occurred. They
happened to be these:--

"Oh turn not coldly from the poet's bier,
Nor check the sacred drops by Pity given;
For though in sin his body slumbereth here,
His soul, absolved, already wings to heaven."

These lines, says the legend, were looked upon as a divine decree;
the religionists no longer enforced their objections, and the remains
of the bard were left to take their quiet sleep by that "sweet bower
of Mosellay" which he had so often celebrated in his verses.

Were our Byron's right of sepulture to be decided in the same manner,
how few are there of his pages, thus taken at hazard, that would not,
by some genial touch of sympathy with virtue, some glowing tribute to
the bright works of God, or some gush of natural devotion more
affecting than any homily, give him a title to admission into the
purest temple of which Christian Charity ever held the guardianship.

Let the decision, however, of these Reverend authorities have been,
finally, what it might, it was the wish, as is understood, of Lord
Byron's dearest relative to have his remains laid in the family vault
at Hucknall, near Newstead. On being landed from the Florida, the
body had, under the direction of his Lordship's executors, Mr.
Hobhouse and Mr. Hanson, been removed to the house of Sir Edward
Knatchbull in Great George Street, Westminster, where it lay in state
during Friday and Saturday, the 9th and 10th of July, and on the
following Monday the funeral procession took place. Leaving
Westminster at eleven o'clock in the morning, attended by most of his
Lordship's personal friends and by the carriages of several persons
of rank, it proceeded through various streets of the metropolis
towards the North Road. At Pancras Church, the ceremonial of the
procession being at an end, the carriages returned; and the hearse
continued its way, by slow stages, to Nottingham.

It was on Friday the 16th of July that, in the small village church
of Hucknall, the last duties were paid to the remains of Byron, by
depositing them, close to those of his mother, in the family vault.
Exactly on the same day of the same month in the preceding year, he
had said, it will be recollected, despondingly, t