emotion on the hills at sunset, because they remind him of the
mountains among which he passed his childhood, is already, in heart
and imagination, a poet. It was during their stay at Cheltenham that a
fortune-teller, whom his mother consulted, pronounced a prediction
concerning him which, for some time, left a strong impression on his
mind. Mrs. Byron had, it seems, in her first visit to this person,
(who, if I mistake not, was the celebrated fortune-teller, Mrs.
Williams,) endeavoured to pass herself off as a maiden lady. The
sibyl, however, was not so easily deceived;--she pronounced her wise
consulter to be not only a married woman, but the mother of a son who
was lame, and to whom, among other events which she read in the stars,
it was predestined that his life should be in danger from poison
before he was of age, and that he should be twice married,--the second
time, to a foreign lady. About two years afterwards he himself
mentioned these particulars to the person from whom I heard the
story, and said that the thought of the first part of the prophecy
very often occurred to him. The latter part, however, seems to have
been the _nearer_ guess of the two.

To a shy disposition, such as Byron's was in his youth--and such as,
to a certain degree, it continued all his life--the transition from a
quiet establishment, like that of Dulwich Grove, to the bustle of a
great public school was sufficiently trying. Accordingly, we find from
his own account, that, for the first year and a half, he "hated
Harrow." The activity, however, and sociableness of his nature soon
conquered this repugnance; and, from being, as he himself says, "a
most unpopular boy," he rose at length to be a leader in all the
sports, schemes, and mischief of the school.

For a general notion of his dispositions and capacities at this