positions. If he has any thing of mine
in his possession, the MS. will put it beyond controversy; but I
scarcely think that any one who knows me would believe the thing in
the Magazine to be mine, even if they saw it in my own
hieroglyphics.

"I write to you in the agonies of a _sirocco_, which annihilates
me; and I have been fool enough to do four things since dinner,
which are as well omitted in very hot weather: 1stly, * * * *;
2dly, to play at billiards from 10 to 12, under the influence of
lighted lamps, that doubled the heat; 3dly, to go afterwards into a
red-hot conversazione of the Countess Benzoni's; and, 4thly, to
begin this letter at three in the morning: but being begun, it must
be finished.

"Ever very truly and affectionately yours,

"B.

"P.S. I petition for tooth-brushes, powder, magnesia, Macassar oil
(or Russia), _the_ sashes, and Sir Nl. Wraxall's Memoirs of his own
Times. I want, besides, a bull-dog, a terrier, and two Newfoundland
dogs; and I want (is it Buck's?) a life of _Richard 3d_,
advertised by Longman _long, long, long_ ago; I asked for it at
least three years since. See Longman's advertisements."

* * * * *

About the middle of April, Madame Guiccioli had been obliged to quit
Venice with her husband. Having several houses on the road from Venice
to Ravenna, it was his habit to stop at these mansions, one after the
other, in his journeys between the two cities; and from all these places
the enamoured young Countess now wrote to Lord Byron, expressing, in the
most passionate and pathetic terms, her despair at leaving him. So
utterly, indeed, did this feeling overpower her, that three times, in
the course of her first day's journey, she was seized with fainting
fits. In one of her letters, which I saw when at Venice, dated, if I
recollect right, from "Ca Zen, Cavanelle di Po," she tells him that the
solitude of this place, which she had before found irksome, was, now
that one sole idea occupied her mind, become dear and welcome to her,
and promises that, as soon as she arrives at Ravenna, "she will,
according to his wish, avoid all general society, and devote herself to
reading, music, domestic occupations, riding on horseback,--every thing,
in short, that she knew he would most like." What a change for a young
and simple girl, who, but a few weeks before, ha