an expression of religious resignation on his features. 'She is more
fortunate than we are,' he said; 'besides her position in the world would
scarcely have allowed her to be happy. It is God's will--let us mention it
no more.' And from that day he would never pronounce her name; but became
more anxious when he spoke of Ada,--so much so as to disquiet himself when
the usual accounts sent him were for a post or two delayed."

The melancholy death of poor Shelley, which happened, as we have seen,
also during this period, seems to have affected Lord Byron's mind less
with grief for the actual loss of his friend than with bitter indignation
against those who had, through life, so grossly misrepresented him; and
never certainly was there an instance where the supposed absence of all
religion in an individual was assumed so eagerly as an excuse for the
entire absence of truth and charity in judging him. Though never
personally acquainted with Mr. Shelley, I can join freely with those who
most loved him in admiring the various excellencies of his heart and
genius, and lamenting the too early doom that robbed us of the mature
fruits of both. His short life had been, like his poetry, a sort of bright,
erroneous dream,--false in the general principles on which it proceeded,
though beautiful and attaching in most of the details. Had full time been
allowed for the "over-light" of his imagination to have been tempered down
by the judgment which, in him, was still in reserve, the world at large
would have been taught to pay that high homage to his genius which those
only who saw what he was capable of can now be expected to accord to it.

It was about this time that Mr. Cowell, paying a visit to Lord Byron at
Genoa, was told by him that some friends of Mr. Shelley, sitting together
one evening, had seen that gentleman, distinctly, as they thought, walk,
into a little wood at Lerici, when at the same moment, as they afterwards
discovered, he was far away, in quite a different direction. "This," added