----

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

"Behold in these charming lines," continues Galt, "a perfect sample of
his _ethereal admiration_, his _immaterial_ enthusiasm.

"The sentiment contained in this fine poetry," says he, "beyond all
doubt belongs to the highest order of intellectual beauty;" and it
seemed proved to him that love, in Lord Byron, was rather a metaphysical
conception than a sensual passion. He remarked that even when Lord
Byron recalls the precocious feelings of his childhood toward his little
cousins--feelings so strong as to make him lose sleep, appetite, peace;
when he describes them, still unable to explain them--we feel that they
were passions much more ethereal with him than with children in general.

"It should be duly remarked," says Galt, "that there is not a single
circumstance in his souvenirs which shows, despite the strength of their
natural sympathy, the smallest influence of any particular attraction.
He recollects well the color of her hair, the shade of her eyes, even
the dress she wore, but he remembers his little Mary as if she were a
Peri, a pure spirit; and it does not appear that his torments and his
wakefulness haunted with the thought of his little cousin, were in any
way produced by jealousy, or doubt, or fears, or any other consequence
of passion."

And when Galt speaks of "Tasso's Lament," he expresses the same opinion,
namely, that in his writings Lord Byron treats of love as of a
metaphysical conception, and that the fine verses he has put into the
mouth of Tasso would still better become himself:--

"It is no marvel--from my very birth
My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth:
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of