in good health. At times, I fear, 'I am not in my perfect mind;'--and
yet my heart and head have stood many a crash, and what should ail them
now? They prey upon themselves, and I am sick--sick--'Prithee, undo this
button--why should a cat, a rat, a dog have life--and _thou_ no life at
all?' Six-and-twenty years, as they call them, why, I might and should
have been a Pasha by this time. 'I 'gin to be a weary of the sun.'

"Buonaparte is not yet beaten; but has rebutted Blucher, and repiqued
Swartzenburg. This it is to have a head. If he again wins, 'Væ victis!'

[Footnote 2: This ancient housemaid, of whose gaunt and witch-like
appearance it would be impossible to convey any idea but by the pencil,
furnished one among the numerous instances of Lord Byron's proneness to
attach himself to any thing, however homely, that had once enlisted his
good nature in its behalf, and become associated with his thoughts. He
first found this old woman at his lodgings in Bennet Street, where, for
a whole season, she was the perpetual scarecrow of his visiters. When,
next year, he took chambers in Albany, one of the great advantages which
his friends looked to in the change was, that they should get rid of
this phantom. But, no,--there she was again--he had actually brought her
with him from Bennet Street. The following year saw him married, and,
with a regular establishment of servants, in Piccadilly; and here,--as
Mrs. Mule had not made her appearance to any of the visiters,--it was
concluded, rashly, that the witch had vanished. One of those friends,
however, who had most fondly indulged in this persuasion, happening to
call one day when all the male part of the establishment were abroad,
saw, to his dismay, the door opened by the same grim personage, improved
considerably in point of habiliments since he last saw her, and keeping
pace with the increased scale of her master's household, as a new
peruke, and other symptoms of promotion, testified. When asked "how he