these
enthusiasts in their high estimate of his personal services, he had
not yet even been able to perceive any definite way in which those
services could, with any prospect of permanent utility, be applied.

For an insight into the true state of his mind at this crisis, the
following observations of one who watched him with eyes quickened by
anxiety will be found, perhaps, to afford the clearest and most
certain clue. "At this time," says the Contessa Guiccioli, "Lord
Byron again turned his thoughts to Greece; and, excited on every side
by a thousand combining circumstances, found himself, almost before
he had time to form a decision, or well know what he was doing,
obliged to set out for that country. But, notwithstanding his
affection for those regions,--notwithstanding the consciousness of
his own moral energies, which made him say always that 'a man ought
to do something more for society than write verses,'--notwithstanding
the attraction which the object of this voyage must necessarily have
for his noble mind, and that, moreover, he was resolved to return to
Italy within a few months,--notwithstanding all this, every person
who was near him at the time can bear witness to the struggle which
his mind underwent (however much he endeavoured to hide it), as the
period fixed for his departure approached."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Fu allora che Lord Byron rivolse i suoi pensieri alla
Grecia; e stimolato poi da ogni parte per mille combinazioni egli si
trovo quasi senza averlo deciso, e senza saperlo, obbligato di
partire per la Grecia. Ma, non ostante il suo affetto per quelle
contrade,--non ostante il sentimento delle sue forze morali che gli
faceva dire sempre 'che un uomo e obbligato a fare per la societa
qualche cosa di piu che dei versi,--non ostante le attrative che
doveva avere pel nobile suo animo l'oggetto di que viaggio,--e non
ostante che egli fosse determinato di ritornare in Italia fra non
molti mesi,--pure in quale combattimento si trovasse il suo cuore
mentre si avvanzava l'epoca della sua parenza (sebbene cercasse
occultarlo) ognuno che lo ha avvicinato allora puu dirlo."]

In addition to the vagueness which this want of any defined object so
unsatisfactorily threw round the enterprise before him, he had also a
sort of ominous presentiment--natural, perhaps, to one of his
temperament under such circumstances--that he was but fulfilling his
own doom in this expedition, and should die in Greece. On the eveni