individual privacy? Was ever a woman so rudely dragged forth, and
exposed to the hardened, vulgar, and unfeeling gaze of mere
curiosity?--her maiden secrets of love thrown open to be handled by
roues; the sanctities of her marriage-chamber desecrated by leering
satyrs; her parents and best friends traduced and slandered, till one
indignant public protest was extorted from her, as by the rack,--a
protest which seems yet to quiver in every word with the indignation of
outraged womanly delicacy!

Then followed coarse blame and coarser comment,--blame for speaking at
all, and blame for not speaking more. One manly voice, raised for her in
honourable protest, was silenced and overborne by the universal roar of
ridicule and reprobation; and henceforth what refuge? Only this
remained: 'Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the
keeping of their souls to him as to a faithful Creator.'

Lady Byron turned to this refuge in silence, and filled up her life with
a noble record of charities and humanities. So pure was she, so
childlike, so artless, so loving, that those who knew her best, feel, to
this day, that a memorial of her is like the relic of a saint. And could
not all this preserve her grave from insult? O England, England!

I speak in sorrow of heart to those who must have known, loved, and
revered Lady Byron, and ask them, Of what were you thinking when you
allowed a paper of so established literary rank as the 'Blackwood,' to
present and earnestly recommend to our New World such a compendium of
lies as the Guiccioli book?

Is the great English-speaking community, whose waves toss from Maine to
California, and whose literature is yet to come back in a thousand voices