view the personal, if not the political, attributes
of what is commonly called the Radical party in England, shows how
unsuited he was naturally to mix in that kind of popular fellowship
which, even to those far less aristocratic in their notions and
feelings, must be sufficiently trying.

But, even granting that all these consequences might safely be
predicted as almost certain to result from his engaging in such a
career, it by no means the more necessarily follows that, _once_
engaged, he would not have persevered in it consistently and
devotedly to the last; nor that, even if reduced to say, with Cicero,
"nil boni praeter causam," he could not have so far abstracted the
principle of the cause from its unworthy supporters as, at the same
time, to uphold the one and despise the others. Looking back, indeed,
from the advanced point where we are now arrived through the whole of
his past career, we cannot fail to observe, pervading all its
apparent changes and inconsistencies, an adherence to the original
bias of his nature, a general consistency in the main, however
shifting and contradictory the details, which had the effect of
preserving, from first to last, all his views and principles, upon
the great subjects that interested him through life, essentially
unchanged.[1]

[Footnote 1: Colonel Stanhope, who saw clearly this leading character
of Byron's mind, has thus justly described it:--"Lord Byron's was a
versatile and still a stubborn mind; it wavered, but always returned
to certain fixed principles."]

At the worst, therefore, though allowing that, from disappointment or
disgust, he might have been led to withdraw all personal
participation in such a cause, in no case would he have shown himself
a recreant to its principles; and though too proud to have ever
descended, like Egalite, into the ranks of the people, he would have
been far too consistent to pass, like Alfieri, into those of their
enemies.

After the failure of those hopes with which he had so sanguinely
looked forward to the issue of the late struggle between Italy and
her rulers, it may be well conceived what a relief it was to him to
turn his eyes to Greece, where a spirit was now rising such as he had
himself imaged forth in dreams of song, but hardly could have even
dreamed that he should live to see it realised. His early travels in
that country had left a lasting impression on his mind; and whenever,
as I have before remarked, his fancy for