the public but an attack upon the honour of the dead. In her statement,
she says of her parents, 'There is no other near relative to vindicate
their memory from insult: I am therefore compelled to break the silence I
had hoped always to have observed.'

If there was any near relative to vindicate Lady Byron's memory, I had no
evidence of the fact; and I considered the utter silence to be strong
evidence to the contrary. In all the storm of obloquy and rebuke that
has raged in consequence of my speaking, I have had two unspeakable
sources of joy; first, that they could not touch her; and, second, that
they could not blind the all-seeing God. It is worth being in darkness
to see the stars.

It has been said that I have drawn on Lady Byron's name greater obloquy
than ever before. I deny the charge. Nothing fouler has been asserted
of her than the charges in the 'Blackwood,' because nothing fouler could
be asserted. No satyr's hoof has ever crushed this pearl deeper in the
mire than the hoof of the 'Blackwood,' but none of them have defiled it
or trodden it so deep that God cannot find it in the day 'when he maketh
up his jewels.'

I have another word, as an American, to say about the contempt shown to
our great people in thus suffering the materials of history to be
falsified to subserve the temporary purposes of family feeling in
England.

Lord Byron belongs not properly either to the Byrons or the Wentworths.
He is not one of their family jewels to be locked up in their cases. He
belongs to the world for which he wrote, to which he appealed, and before
which he dragged his reluctant, delicate wife to a publicity equal with