Robert; the bairn's not ill-favoured, but he will never look like his
father,"--and such sayings, uttered in a calm, sweet voice. Nay, I
remember once how her pale countenance reddened with a sudden flush of
pride, when a gossiping crone alluded to their wedding; and the
widow's eye brightened through her tears to hear how the bridegroom,
sitting that sabbath in his front seat beside his bonny bride, had not
his equal for strength, stature, and all that is beauty in man, in all
the congregation. That, I say, sir, whether right or wrong,
was--forgiveness.

Here is a specimen of how even generous men had been so perverted by the
enchantment of Lord Byron's genius, as to turn all the pathos and power
of the strongest literature of that day against the persecuted, pure
woman, and for the strong, wicked man. These 'Blackwood' writers knew,
by Byron's own filthy, ghastly writings, which had gone sorely against
their own moral stomachs, that he was foul to the bone. They could see,
in Moore's 'Memoirs' right before them, how he had caught an innocent
girl's heart by sending a love-letter, and offer of marriage, at the end
of a long friendly correspondence,--a letter that had been written to
show to his libertine set, and sent on the toss-up of a copper, because
he cared nothing for it one way or the other.

They admit that, having won this poor girl, he had been savage, brutal,
drunken, cruel. They had read the filthy taunts in 'Don Juan,' and the
nameless abominations in the 'Autobiography.' They had admitted among
themselves that his honour was lost; but still this abused, desecrated
woman must reverence her brutal master's memory, and not speak, even to
defend the grave of her own kind father and mother.

That there was no lover of her youth, that the marriage-vow had been a