'the poor fellow speaks in the most affecting manner, telling them that in Lord Byron he had lost a father ' rather than a master; and expatiating upon the indulgence with which he had always treated his domestics, and the care he expressed for their comfort ' and welfare." His valet Fletcher, too, in a letter to Mr. Murray, announcing the event, says, 'Please to excuse all de'fects, for I scarcely know what I either say or do ; 'for, after twenty years service with my lord, he was more to me than a father, and I am too much dis'tressed to give now a correct account of every par 'ticular.' In speaking of the effect produced on the friends of Greece by this event, Mr. Trelawney says, I think 'Byron's name was the great means of getting the Loan. A Mr. Marshall, with 8000l. per annum, was as far as Corfu, and turned back on hearing of Lord Byron's death. Thousands of people were flocking here some had arrived as far as Corfu, and hearing ' of his death, confessed they came out to devote their 'fortunes not to the Greeks, or from interest in the cause, but to the noble poet; and the "Pilgrim of Eternity" having departed, they turned back t.' *The title given by Shelley to Lord Byron in his Elegy on the death of Keats. The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 'Over his living head like Heaven is bent Came veiling all the lightnings of his song 'In sorrow.' Parry, too, mentions an instance to the same effeet:-'While I was on the quarantine-house at Zante, a gentleman called on me, and made ' numerous inquiries as to Lord Byron. He said he was only one of fourteen English gentlemen, then at Ancona, who had sent him on to 'obtain intelligence, and only waited his return to come and join Lord Byron. They were to form a mounted guard for him, and meant to devote their personal services and their incomes to the Greek cause. On hearing of Lord Byron's death, however, they turned back.' The funeral ceremony, which, on account of the rains, had been postponed for a day, took place in the church of St. Nicholas, at Missolonghi, on the 22d of April, and is thus feelingly described by an eye witness. 'In the midst of his own brigade, of the troops of 'the Government, and of the whole population, on 'the shoulders of the officers of his corps, relieved 'occasionally by other Greeks, the most precious por'tion of his honoured remains were carried to the church, where lie the bodies of Marco Bozzari and ' of General Normann. There we laid them down : 'the coffin was a rude, ill-constructed chest of wood a black mantle served for a pall; and over it we 'placed a helmet and a sword, and a crown of laurel. 'But no funeral pomp could have left the impression, nor spoken the feelings, of this simple ceremony. The wretchedness and desolation of the place itself; the wild and half-civilised warriors around us; their deep-felt, unaffected grief; the fond recollections; the disappointed hopes; the anxieties and sad pre'sentiments which might be read on every counte'nance-all contributed to form a scene more moving, 'more truly affecting, than perhaps was ever before ' witnessed round the grave of a great man. When the funeral service was over, we left the 'bier in the middle of the church, where it remained ' until the evening of the next day, and was guarded 'by a detachment of his own brigade. The church was crowded without cessation by those who came 'to honour and to regret the benefactor of Greece. In the evening of the 23d, the bier was privately 'carried back by his officers to his own house. The 'coffin was not closed till the 29th of the month. 'Immediately after his death, his countenance had an 'air of calmness, mingled with a severity, that seemed gradually to soften; for when I took a last look of him, the expression, at least to my eyes, was truly 'sublime.' We have seen how decidedly, while in Italy, Lord Byron expressed his repugnance to the idea of his remains resting upon English ground; and the injunctions he so frequently gave to Mr. Hoppner on this point show his wishes to have been, at least, during that period, sincere. With one so changing, however, in his impulses, it was not too much to take for granted that the far more cordial feeling entertained by him towards his countrymen at Cephalonia, would have been followed by a correspondent change in this antipathy to England as a last resting-place. It is, at all events, fortunate that by no such spleen of the moment has his native country been deprived of her natural right to enshrine within her own bosom one of the noblest of her dead, and to atone for any wrong she may have inflicted upon him, while living, by making his tomb a place of pilgrimage for her sons through all ages. By Colonel Stanhope and others it was suggested that, as a tribute to the land he celebrated and died for, his remains should be deposited at Athens, in the Temple of Theseus; and the Chief Odysseus despatched an express to Missolonghi to enforce this wish. On the part of the town, too, in which he breathed his last, a similar request had been made by the citizens, and it was thought advisable so far to accede to their desires as to leave with them, for interment, one of the vessels, in which his remains, after embalmment, were enclosed. |