burst on modern Greece contrasted with its ancient glory, and the exquisitely pathetic and beautiful comparison of the same country to the human frame bereft of life:

Picture of Modern Greece.

He who hath bent him o'er the dead,
Ere the first day of death is fled-
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress-
Before decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,
And marked the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there

The fixed yet tender traits that streak

The languor of the placid cheek

And-but for that sad shrouded eye,

That fires not-wins not-weeps not-now,
And but for that chill changeless brow,
Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes-but for these-and these alone-
Some moments-ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power,
So fair-so calm-so softly sealed
The first-last look-by death revealed!
Such is the aspect of this shore;
"Tis Greece-but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,
We start-for soul is wanting there.
Hers is the loveliness in death,

That parts not quite with parting breath,
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb-
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,

The farewell beam of Feeling past away!

Spark of that flame-perchance of heavenly birth

Which gleams-but warms no more its cherished earth!

The Prisoner of Chillon' is also natural and affecting: the story is painful and hopeless, but it is told with inimitable tenderness and simplicity. The reality of the scenes in 'Don Juan' must strike every reader. Byron, it is well known, took pains to collect his materials. His account of the shipwreck is drawn from narratives of actual occurrences, and his Grecian pictures, feasts, dresses, and holiday pastimes, are literal transcripts from life. Coleridge thought the character of Lambro, and especially the description of his return, the finest of all Byron's efforts; it is more dramatic and lifelike than any other of his numerous paintings. Haidee is also the most captivating of all his heroines. His Gulnares and Medoras, his Corsairs and dark mysterious personages—

Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes

are monstrosities in nature, and do not possess one tithe of the interest

or permanent poetical beauty that centres in the lonely residence in the Cyclades. The English descriptions in 'Juan' are greatly inferior. There is a palpable falling off in poetical power, and the peculiar prejudices and forced ill-natured satire of the poet are brought prominently forward. Yet even here we have occasionally a flash of the carly light that 'led astray.' The sketch of Aurora Raby is graceful and interesting compared with Haidee, it is something like Fielding's Amelia coming after Sophia Western; and Newstead Abbey is described with a clearness and beauty not unworthy the author of 'Childe Harold.' The Epicurean philosophy of the Childe' is visible in every page of 'Don Juan,' but it is no longer grave, dignified, and misanthropical: it is mixed up with wit, humour, the keenest penetration, and the most astonishing variety of expression, from colloquial carelessness and ease, to the highest and deepest tones of the lyre. The poet has the power of Mephistophiles over the scenes and passions of human life and society-disclosing their secret workings, and stripping them of all conventional allurements and disguises. Unfortunately, his knowledge is more of evil than of good. The distinctions between virtue and vice had been broken down or obscured in his own mind, and they are undistinguishable in 'Don Juan.’ Early sensuality had tainted his whole nature. He portrays generous emotions and moral feelings-distress, suffering, and pathos-and then dashes them with burlesque humor, wild profanity, and unseasonable mockery. In 'Childe Harold' we have none of this moral anatomy, or its accompanying licentiousness; but there is abundance of scorn and defiance of the ordinary pursuits and ambition of mankind. The fairest portions of the earth are traversed in a spirit of bitterness and desolation by one satiated with pleasure, contemning society, the victim of a dreary and hopeless scepticism. Such a character would have been repulsive if the poem had not been adorned with the graces of animated description, and original and striking sentiment. The poet's sketches of Spanish and Grecian scenery, and his glimpses of the life and manners of the classic mountaineers, are as true as were ever transferred to canvas; and not less striking are the meditations of the Pilgrim on the particular events which adorned or cursed the soil he trod. Thus, on the field of Albuera, he conjures up a noble image:

Red Battle-The Demon of War.

Hark! heard you not those hoofs of dreadful note?
Sounds not the clang of conflict on the heath?
Saw ye not whom the reeking sabre smote;
Nor saved your brethren ere they sank beneath
Tyrants and tyrants' slaves ?-the fires of death,
The bale-fires flash on high; from rock to rock
Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe;
Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc,

Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock,

Lo! where the giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deepening in the sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon.
Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon
Flashing afar--and at his iron feet

Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done;
For on this morn three potent nations meet,

To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet.

In surveying the ruins of Athens, the spirit of Byron soars to its loftiest flight, picturing its fallen glories, and indulging in the most touching and magnificent strain of his sceptical philosophy.

Ancient Greece.

Ancient of days! august Athena! where,

Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone-glimmering through the dream of things that were,

First in the race that led to glory's goal,

They won, and passed away-is this the whole?

A school-boy's tale, the wonder of an hour!

The warrior's weapon, and the sophist's stole,

Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,

Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

Sun of the morning, rise! approach you here!
Come, but molest not your defenceless urn;
Look on this spot-a nation's sepulchre!
Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn.
Even gods must yield-religions take their turn;
Twas Jove's-'tis Mahomet's-and other creeds'
Will rise with other years, till man shall learn
Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds;

Poor child of Doubt and Death, whose hope is built on reeds.

Bound to the earth, he lifts his eyes to heaven

Is't not enough, unhappy thing, to know

Thou art? Is this a boon so kindly given,

That being, thou wouldst be again, and go,

Thou know's not, reck'st not, to what region, so

On earth no more, but mingled with the skies?
Still wilt thou dream on future joy and woe?
Regard and weigh yon dust before it flies:
That little urn saith more than thousand homilies.

Or burst the vanished hero's lofty mound:
Far on the solitary shore he sleeps;

He fell, and falling, nations mourned around:
But now not one of saddening thousands weeps,
Nor warlike worshipper his vigil keeps

Where demi-gods appeared, as records tell.
Remove yon skull from out the scattered heaps:
Is that a temple where a god may dwell?

Why, even the worm at last disdains her shattered cell.

Look on this broken arch. its ruined wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul;
Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall,"
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul;
Behold through each lack-lustre eyeless hole,

The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,

And passion's host, that never brooked control:
Can all saint, sage, or sophist ever writ,
People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?

Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son!
All that we know is, nothing can be known.'
Why should we shrink from what we cannot shun?
Each hath his pang, but feeble sufferers groan
With brain-born dreams of evil all their own.
Pursue what chance or fate proclaimeth best;
Peace waits us on the shores of Acheron:
There no forced banquet claims the sated guest,
But silence spreads the couch of ever-welcome rest.
Yet if, as holiest men have deemed, there be
A land of souls beyond that sable shore,
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore,
How sweet it were in concert to adore

With those who made our mortal labours light!
To hear each voice we feared to hear no more!
Behold each mighty shade revealed to sight,

The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right!

The third canto of 'Childe Harold' is more deeply imbued with a love of nature than any of his previous productions. A new power had been imparted to him on the shores of the 'Leman lake.' He had just escaped from the strife of London and his own domestic unhappiness, and his conversations with Shelley might have turned him more strongly to this pure poetical source. The poetry of Wordsworth had also unconsciously lent its influence. An evening scene by the side of the lake is thus exquisitely described:

Lake Leman (Geneva).

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing'
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing

To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved,

That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

It is the hush of night; and all between

Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen-
Save darkened Jura, whose capped heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,

There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood: on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,

Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;

He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill!

At intervals, some bird from out the brakes,
Starts into voice a moment-then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill-

But that is fancy, for the star-light dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away, til they infuse
Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her hues.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires-'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are

A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar,

That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

A forcible contrast to this still scene is then given in a brief descrip tion of the same landscape during a thunder-storm:

The sky is changed!--and such a change! O night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light

Of a dark eye in woman! Far along

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

And this is in the night: most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight-
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!

And now again 'tis black-and now the glee

Of the loud hill shakes with its mountain-mirth,

As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

In the fourth canto there is a greater throng of images and objects. The poet opens with a sketch of the peculiar beauty and departed greatness of Venice, rising from the sea, with her tiara of proud towers' in airy distance. He then resumes his pilgrimage-moralises on the scenes of Petrarch and Tasso, Dante and Boccaccio-and visits the lake of Thrasimene and the temple of Clitumnus.

Temple of Citumnus.

But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave

Of the most living crystal that was e'er

The haunt of river-nymph, to gaze and lave

Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear

Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer

Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

And most serene of aspect and most clear!

Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters,

A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

And on thy happy shore a temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,