one way, from the European to the Asiatic side. In a long letter to Mr Murray the publisher, under date Ravenna, 21st February 1821, Byron vindicates the adequacy of his experiment to prove the credibility of Leander's feat, in opposition to Mr Turner, a traveller, who had failed in an attempt to cross from the Asiatic side, and who attributed his own failure to an unfavourable current, as he did Byron's success to a favourable one. He mentions that, whereas he had been only one hour and ten minutes in crossing the Hellespont, he had been four hours and twenty minutes in the water, without help or rest, eight years afterwards, at a swimming match in the Grand Canal of Venice.

In the month of July he returned to Athens, whence he made various excursions, particularly to the Morea. The monument of Lysicrates, popularly known as the Lantern of Diogenes, a timeworn building, which Dugald Stewart's monument on the Calton Hill, Edinburgh, greatly resembles in size and plan, is still pointed out by Athenian guides as having been Byron's head-quarters on this occasion. The fact is, that this monument, fortunately for its preservation, then formed part of the wall of a Franciscan convent, where Byron had lodgings. His "Hints from Horace," a satire upon London life, were written here, and bear date, "Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 12, 1811." The preparation of the notes on the state of Modern Greece, appended to the second canto of "Childe Harold," was another labour that engaged him here, and one more congenial to the place.

After an absence of two years Byron returned, via Malta, to England. His mother had been impressed by a notion that she should never see him again, and even when Byron reached London, said to her waiting-woman, "If I should be dead before Byron comes down, what a strange thing it would be!" Her presentiment was fulfilled, for the perusal of certain upholsterers' bills put her, ailing as she was at the time, into such a rage that she died somewhat suddenly in the end of July 1811, and Byron reached Newstead in time, not to see her in life, but to bury her. His conduct on this occasion is an extreme illustration of that perversity by which he delighted to misrepresent himself before the world. Instead of following the remains himself, he stood at the abbey door, looking at the procession as it moved off; and then, putting on his sparring gloves, he commenced his usual pastime with a lad who served him as antagonist. Who could imagine this to be the same son who, a few nights before, had been found by a servant sitting in the dark by his mother's corpse, and sighing heavily over it? and who, when the servant expostu lated with him, answered:-" Oh Mrs Pry, I had but one friend in the world, and she is gone!" This continual belying of himself seems to have sprung from a peculiarity of temperament, of which he gives the following account, in a letter written August 21, 1811, consequently about a month after his mother's funeral:"Your letter gives me credit for more acute feelings than I possess; for though I feel tolerably miserable, yet I am at the same time subject to a kind of hysterical merriment, or rather laughter without merriment, which I can neither account for nor conquer

Moore's Life of Byron, vol v., p. 189.