subject, which ended, like most arguments, by leaving both of the same
opinion as when it commenced. I endeavoured to prove that crimes were
not only injurious to the perpetrators, but often ruinous to the
innocent, and productive of misery to friends and relations, whereas
selfishness and vanity carried with them their own punishment, the
first depriving the person of all sympathy, and the second exposing
him to ridicule which to the vain is a heavy punishment, but that
their effects were not destructive to society as are crimes.

He laughed when I told him that having heard him so often declaim
against vanity, and detect it so often in his friends, I began to
suspect he knew the malady by having had it himself, and that I had
observed through life, that those persons who had the most vanity were
the most severe against that failing in their friends. He wished to
impress upon me that he was not vain, and gave various proofs to
establish this; but I produced against him his boasts of swimming, his
evident desire of being considered more _un homme de societe_ than a
poet, and other little examples, when he laughingly pleaded guilty,
and promised to be more merciful towards his friends.

Byron attempted to be gay, but the effort was not successful, and he
wished us good night with a trepidation of manner that marked his
feelings. And this is the man that I have heard considered unfeeling!
How often are our best qualities turned against us, and made the
instruments for wounding us in the most vulnerable part, until,
ashamed of betraying our susceptibility, we affect an insensibility
we are far from possessing, and, while we deceive others, nourish in
secret the feelings that prey _only_ on our own hearts!

--_New Monthly Magazine._