remarks in the margin,
which showed that she was possessed of great good sense and considerable
talent. Could, then, such a heart as Lord Byron's be ungrateful, and not
love such a mother? Mr. Galt, a biographer of Byron's, who is certainly
not to be suspected of partiality, renders him, however, full justice in
regard to his filial devotion during the life of his mother, and to the
deep distress which he felt at her death.

"In the mean time, while busily engaged in his literary projects with
Mr. Dallas, and in law affairs with his agent, he was suddenly summoned
to Newstead by the state of his mother's health. Before he reached the
Abbey she had breathed her last. The event deeply affected him.
Notwithstanding her violent temper, her affection for him had been so
fond and ardent that he undoubtedly returned it with unaffected
sincerity; and, from many casual and incidental expressions which I have
heard him employ concerning her, I am persuaded that this filial love
was not at any time even of an ordinary kind."

On the night after his arrival at the Abbey, the waiting-woman of Mrs.
Byron, in passing the door of the room where the corpse lay, heard the
sound of some one sighing heavily within, and, on entering, found his
lordship sitting in the dark beside the bed. She remonstrated, when he
burst into tears, and exclaimed, "I had but one friend in the world, and
she is gone!" This same filial devotion often inspired him with
beautiful lines, such as those in the third canto of "Childe Harold,"
when standing before the tomb of Julia Alpinula, he exclaims:

LXVI.

"And there--oh! sweet and sacred be the name!--
Julia--the daughter, the devoted--gave
Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim
Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave.
Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave
The life she lived in; but the Judge was just,
And then she died on him she could not save.
Their tomb was simple, and without a bust,
And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust.

LXVII.

"But these are deeds which should not pass away,
And names that must not wither, though the earth
Forgets her empires with a just decay,
The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth;
The high, the mountain-majesty of worth
Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,
And from its immortality look forth
In the sun's face, like yonder Alpin