Circling all nature, hush'd, and dim, and still, With the far mountain-crescent half surrounded On one side, and the deep sea calm and chill, Upon the other, and the rosy sky, With one star sparkling through it like an eye. And thus they wander'd forth, and hand in hand, Over the shining pebbles and the shells, Glided along the smooth and harden'd sand…. .... They look'd up to the sky, whose floating glow Spread like a rosy ocean, vast and bright; They gazed upon the glittering sea below, Whence the broad moon rose circling into sight; They heard the waves splash, and the wind so low, And saw each other's dark eyes darting light Into each other—and, beholding this, Their lips drew near, and clung into a kiss. (Don Juan.)

Byron's restless spirit, perpetually eager to express itself in action, now makes him anxious to dismiss intellectual discussions: and he hastily proposes a game of billiards. As he moves around the billiard-table, his lameness is distinctly noticeable: not all the ingenuity of his tailor, nor his own efforts to walk naturally, can conceal it. Yet, as has been said of him in other matters, he redeems all his defects by his graces. And his companions note with surprise the remarkable change for the better which has taken place in him since, a few months before, he arrived at this old palace on the Arno with a troop of servants, carriages, horses, fowls, dogs, and monkeys. The selfish and sensual Byron of Venetian days is entirely a thing of the past. "He is improved in every respect,"—says Shelley to Williams, "in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness." And although keeping up a certain splendour upon an income of £4000 a year, he devotes £1000 of that income entirely to purposes of charity. His own personal needs are of the simplest.

The game concluded, Byron's carriage is announced: his friends and he proceed in it as far as the town gates of Pisa, by this means to avoid the starers of the streets. Horses are in readiness at the gates: the company, with one or two servant-men, mount and ride into the pine-forest that reaches towards the sea.

 

Byron is as excellent and graceful a rider as a swimmer, with remarkable powers of endurance. He can cover seventy or eighty miles a day, fast going, and swim five miles at a stretch: he is indeed, in many respects, the typical open-air Englishman. But to-day he rides slowly and immersed in thought. As his wife years since assured him, he is at heart the most melancholy of mankind, often when apparently the gayest. His abnormally long sight takes in every detail of the scenery,—storing it up unconsciously for future reference. It has been said that Byron is nothing without his descriptions: and in these he has achieved some of his finest work: notably in some immortal stanzas of Childe Harold, with their dazzling panoramic succession of vivid scenes: whether depicting how

or, on the eve of Waterloo,

whether again, in the "vale of vintage,"

or, looking backwards through a score of centuries,

 

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