every step, wrung from out his soul, was that at which we
are now arrived, his marriage and its results,--without which, dear as
was the price paid by him in peace and character, his career would have
been incomplete, and the world still left in ignorance of the full
compass of his genius. It is, indeed, worthy of remark, that it was not
till his domestic circumstances began to darken around him that his
fancy, which had long been idle, again rose upon the wing,--both The
Siege of Corinth and Parisina having been produced but a short time
before the separation. How conscious he was, too, that the turmoil which
followed was the true element of his restless spirit, may be collected
from several passages of his letters at that period, in one of which he
even mentions that his health had become all the better for the
conflict:--"It is odd," he says, "but agitation or contest of any kind
gives a rebound to my spirits, and sets me up for the time."

This buoyancy it was,--this irrepressible spring of mind,--that now
enabled him to bear up not only against the assaults of others, but,
what was still more difficult, against his own thoughts and feelings.
The muster of all his mental resources to which, in self-defence, he had
been driven, but opened to him the yet undreamed extent and capacity of
his powers, and inspired him with a proud confidence that he should yet
shine down these calumnious mists, convert censure to wonder, and compel
even those who could not approve to admire.

The route which he now took, through Flanders and by the Rhine, is best
traced in his own matchless verses, which leave a portion of their glory
on all that they touch, and lend to scenes, already clothed with
immortality by nature and by history, the no less durable associations
of undying song. On his leaving Brussels, an incident occurred which
would be hardly worth relating, were it not for the proof it affords of
the malicious assiduity with which every thing to his disadvantage was
now caught up and circulated in England. Mr. Pryce Gordon, a gentleman,
who appears to have seen a good deal of him during his short stay at
Brussels, thus relates the anecdote:--

"Lord Byron travelled in a huge coach, copied from the celebrated one of
Napoleon, taken at Genappe, with additions. Besides a _lit de repos_, it
contained a library, a plate-chest, and every apparatus for dining in
it. It was not, however, found sufficiently capacious for his baggage
a