Subjoined to that interesting little work, the 'Six Weeks' Tour,' there is a letter by Shelley himself, giving an account of this excursion round the Lake, and written with all the enthusiasm such scenes should inspire. In describing a beautiful child they saw at the village of Nerni, he says, 'My companion gave ' him a piece of money, which he took without speaking, with a sweet smile of easy thankfulness, and 'then with an unembarrassed air turned to his play.' There were, indeed, few things Lord Byron more delighted in than to watch beautiful children at play ;many a lovely Swiss child (says a person who saw 'him daily at this time) received crowns from him as 'the reward of their grace and sweetness.'

Speaking of their lodgings at Nerni, which were gloomy and dirty, Mr. Shelley says, 'On returning to ' our inn, we found that the servant had arranged our rooms, and deprived them of the greater portion ' of their former disconsolate appearance. They re'minded my companion of Greece:-it was five years, ' he said, since he had slept in such beds.'

Luckily for Shelley's full enjoyment of these scenes, he had never before happened to read the Heloise; and though his companion had long been familiar with that romance, the sight of the region itself, the 'birth'place of deep Love,' every spot of which seemed instinct with the passion of the story, gave to the whole a fresh and actual existence in his mind. Both were under the spell of the Genius of the place,-both full of emotion; and as they walked silently through the vineyards that were once the 'bosquet de Julie,' Lord Byron suddenly exclaimed, 'Thank God, Polidori is 'not here.'

That the glowing stanzas suggested to him by this

scene were written upon the spot itself appears almost certain, from the letter addressed to Mr. Murray on his way back to Diodati, in which he announces the Third Canto as complete, and consisting of 117 stanzas. At Ouchy, near Lausanne,-the place from which that letter is dated, he and his friend were detained two days, in a small inn, by the weather: and it was there, in that short interval, that he wrote his 'Prisoner of Chillon,' adding one more deathless association to the already immortalized localities of the Lake.

On his return from this excursion to Diodati, an occasion was afforded for the gratification of his jesting propensities by the avowal of the young physician that he had fallen in love. On the evening of this tender confession they both appeared at Shelley's cottage-Lord Byron, in the highest and most boyish spirits, rubbing his hands as he walked about the room, and in that utter incapacity of retention which was one of his foibles, making jesting allusions to the secret he had just heard. The brow of the doctor darkened as this pleasantry went on, and, at last, he angrily accused Lord Byron of hardness of heart.

'I

never,' said he, 'met with a person so unfeeling.' This sally, though the poet had evidently brought it upon himself, annoyed him most deeply. Call me cold'hearted-me insensible!" he exclaimed, with manifest emotion as well might you say that glass is not 'brittle, which has been cast down a precipice, and 'lies dashed to pieces at the foot!'

In the month of July he paid a visit to Copet, and was received by the distinguished hostess with a cordiality the more sensibly felt by him as, from his personal unpopularity at this time, he had hardly ventured

to count upon it*. In her usual frank style, she took him to task upon his matrimonial conduct-but in a way that won upon his mind, and disposed him to yield to her suggestions. He must endeavour, she told him, to bring about a reconciliation with his wife, and must submit to contend no longer with the opinion of the world. In vain did he quote her own motto to Delphine, Un homme peut braver, une femme doit se 'succomber aux opinions du monde ;'-her reply was, that all this might be very well to say, but that, in real life, the duty and necessity of yielding belonged also to the man. Her eloquence, in short, so far succeeded, that he was prevailed upon to write a letter to a friend in England, declaring himself still willing to be reconciled to Lady Byron,-a concession not a little startling to those who had so often, lately, heard him declare that, 'having done all in his power to persuade Lady Byron to return, and with this view put off as long as he could signing the deed of separation, that step being once taken, they were now divided for ' ever.'

Of the particulars of this brief negotiation that en sued upon Madame de Staël's suggestion, I have no very accurate remembrance; but there can be little doubt that its failure, after the violence he had done his own pride in the overture, was what first infused any mixture of resentment or bitterness into the feel

In the account of this visit to Copet in his Memoranda, he spoke in high terms of the daughter of his hostess, the present Duchess de Broglie, and, in noticing how much she appeared to be attached to her husband, remarked that Nothing was more pleasing than to see the development of the domestic affections in a very young woman.' Of Madame de Staël, in that Memoir, he spoke thus: Madame de Staël was a good woman at heart and the cleverest at bottom, but spoilt by a wish to be '--she knew not what. In her own house she was amiable; in

person's, you wished her gone, and in her own again.'

any other