e snow,
Imperishably pure beyond all things below."

As a note to the above, Byron writes:

"Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain
attempt to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus
Coecina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago; it is thus:

"JULIA ALPINULA:
HIC JACEO.
INFELICIS PATRIS, INFELIX PROLES.
DEAE AVENTIAE SACERDOS.
EXORARE PATRIS NECEM NON POTUI:
MALE MORI IN FATIS ILLE ERAT.
VIXI ANNOS XXIII.

"I know," adds Byron, "of no human composition so affecting as this, nor
a history of deeper interest. These are the names and actions which
ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy
tenderness."

His father having died in 1793, when Byron was only four years of age,
he could not know him; but to show how keen were his sentiments toward
his memory, I must transcribe a note of Murray's after the following
lines in "Hours of Idleness:"--

"Stern Death forbade my orphan youth to share
The tender guidance of a father's care;
Can rank, or e'en a guardian's name supply
The love which glistens in a father's eye?"

"In all the biographies which have yet been published of Byron," remarks
Murray, "undue severity has been the light by which the character of
Byron's father has been judged. Like his son, he was unfortunately
brought up by a mother only. Admiral Byron, his father, being compelled
by his duties to live away from his family, the son was brought up in a
French military academy, which was not likely at that time to do his
morals much good. He passed from school into the Coldstream Guards,
where he was launched into every species of temptation imaginable, and
likely to present themselves to a young man of singular beauty, and heir
to a fine name, in the metropolis of England."

The unfortunate intrigue, of which so much has been said, as if it had
compromised his reputation as a man of honor, took place when he was
just of age, and he died in France at the age of thirty-five. One can
hardly understand why the biographers of Byron have insisted upon
depreciating the personal qualities of his father, apart from the
positively injurious and wicked assertions made against him in memoirs
of Lord Byron's life, and in reviews of such memoirs.

Some severe reflections of this kind having found their way into the
preface to a French translation of Byron's works, which appeared