'was not one of us who would not, for his sake, have willingly encountered any danger in the world.'

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Colonel Stanhope, whom the sad intelligence reached at Salona, thus writes to the Committee:-'A courier has just arrived from the Chief Scalza. Alas! all our fears are realized. The soul of Byron has taken

its last flight. England has lost her brightest genius, 'Greece her noblest friend. To console them for the loss, he has left behind the emanations of his splendid mind. If Byron had faults, he had redeeming vir 'tues too-he sacrificed his comfort, fortune, health, and life, to the cause of an oppressed nation. Ho'noured be his memory!'

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Mr. Trelawney, who was on his way to Missolonghi at the time, describes as follows the manner in which he first heard of his friend's death:- With all my 'anxiety I could not get here before the third day. It was the second, after having crossed the first great torrent, that I met some soldiers from Missolonghi. 'I had let them all pass me, ere I had resolution ' enough to inquire the news from Missolonghi. I then rode back, and demanded of a straggler the news. I heard nothing more than-Lord Byron is dead,— ' and I proceeded on in gloomy silence.' The writer adds, after detailing the particulars of the poet's illness and death, Your pardon, Stanhope, that I have 'thus turned aside from the great cause in which I 'am embarked. But this is no private grief. ' world has lost its greatest man; I my best friend.' Among his servants the same feeling of sincere grief prevailed:-'I have in my possession (says Mr. Hoppner, in the Notices with which he has favoured 'me) a letter written by his gondolier Tita, who had 'accompanied him from Venice, giving an account to his parents of his master's decease. Of this event

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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 inIdulgence with which he had always treated his do'mestics, 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 defects, 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 distressed 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 †.'

* The title given by Shelley to Lord Byron in his Elegy on the death of Keats.

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 portion 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 she may have inflicted upon him, while living, by making his tomb a place of pilgrimage for her sons through all ages.

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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.

The first step taken, before any decision as to its ultimate disposal, was to have the body conveyed to Zante; and every facility having been afforded by the Resident, Sir Frederick Stoven, in providing and sending transports to Missolonghi for that purpose, on the morning of the second of May the remains were embarked, under a mournful salute from the guns of the fortress' How different,' says Count Gamba, 'from that which had welcomed the arrival of Byron only four months ago!'

At Zante, the determination was taken to send the body to England; and the brig Florida, which had just arrived there with the first instalment of the Loan, was engaged for the purpose. Mr. Blaquiere, under whose care this first portion of the Loan had come, was also the bearer of a Commission for the due management of its disposal in Greece, in which Lord Byron was named as the principal Commissioner. The same ship, however, that brought this honourable mark of confidence was to return with him a corpse. To Colonel Stanhope, who was then at Zante, on his way homeward, was intrusted the charge of his illustrious colleague's remains; and on the 25th of May he embarked with them on board the Florida for England.

In the letter which, on his arrival in the Downs, June 29th, this gentleman addressed to Lord Byron's executors, there is the following passage:- With respect to the funeral ceremony, I am of opinion that his lordship's family should be immediately consulted, and that sanction should be obtained for the public burial of his body either in the great Abbey 'or Cathedral of London.' It has been asserted, and I fear too truly, that on some intimation of the wish