"that I am going to Greece--why do you not come
to me? I can do nothing without you, and am exceedingly anxious to
see you. Pray, come, for I am at last determined to go to Greece:--it
is the only place I was ever contented in. I am serious; and did not
write before, as I might have given you a journey for nothing. They
all say I can be of use to Greece; I do not know how--nor do they;
but, at all events, let us go."

A physician, acquainted with surgery, being considered a necessary
part of his suite, he requested of his own medical attendant at
Genoa, Dr. Alexander, to provide him with such a person; and, on the
recommendation of this gentleman, Dr. Bruno, a young man who had just
left the university with considerable reputation, was engaged. Among
other preparations for his expedition, he ordered three splendid
helmets to be made,--with his never forgotten crest engraved upon
them,--for himself and the two friends who were to accompany him. In
this little circumstance, which in England (where the ridiculous is
so much better understood than the heroic) excited some sneers at the
time, we have one of the many instances that occur amusingly through
his life, to confirm the quaint but, as applied to him, true
observation, that "the child is father to the man;"--the
characteristics of these two periods of life being in him so
anomalously transposed, that while the passions and ripened views of
the man developed themselves in his boyhood, so the easily pleased
fancies and vanities of the boy were for ever breaking out among the
most serious moments of his manhood. The same schoolboy whom we
found, at the beginning of the first volume, boasting of his
intention to raise, at some future time, a troop of horse in black
armour, to be called Byron's Blacks, was now seen trying on with
delight his fine crested helmet, and anticipating the deeds of glory
he was to achieve under its plumes.

At the end of May a letter arrived from Mr. Blaquiere communicating
to him very favourable intelligence, and requesting that he would as
much as possible hasten his departure, as he was now anxiously looked
for, and would be of the greatest service. However encouraging this
summons, and though Lord Byron, thus called upon from all sides, had
now determined to give freely the aid which all deemed so essential,
it is plain from his letters that, in the cool, sagacious view which
he himself took of the whole subject, so far from agreeing with