of the Andes or the Himalayas, you will find the sky and heavens of God above and around about you there, and just the same sky and same heavens that circle and surround the humblest peasant in the dark and toilsome valleys of the earth! So all these lofty flights of fancy, and these deep questionings of human thought, have only helped to teach mankind his utter insignificance when measured with the Infinite.

But we greatly err, if we imagine that the course of Truth has been in one straight, forward line. No, the Course of Truth is zig-zag rather,-like a River, oozing out, at first, in hesitating drops, and tiny rills, from the basis of some cloud-clad, ice-girt mountain,-purling down the slopes in crystal streams, concentrating as they come, sometimes hidden under rocks and rubbish, sometimes sparkling in the sun, leaping sometimes over cataracts and caught up by the wind and shivered into spray, till it seems all lost again; but soon collecting silently in furtive pools and upland tarns, to emerge again roaring down the mountain, white at times and mad with foam against the boulders that impede its course in its early and fanatical career, always running in the hollows and ways of least resistance, and seldom squarely in the middle of its bed, turning now to sunny shallows, and then to shady depths; meandering, zigzagging, cutting out its own irresistible pathway among the shelving rocks and threatening mountains- led off at times in devious channels by sects or parties for their own particular mill-wheels, led off, confined, dammed in with law and dogma, as if with brass and adamant, for ever; but there, confined, dammed in, behold it rises, rises, rises (by the living force behind it, the unseen power above), it rises, rises, rises, till it bursts their breastworks and overwhelms with destruction their habitations and the hands that hemmed it, when, flushed and red in its newer freedom, it re-forms fresh channels for itself, as it sweeps along, in mighty quickening waves, broadening and settling as it goes, watering now more fertile provinces and bearing richer craft on its breast, cleansing and sweetening larger, fairer cities on its banks,

reflecting now again the image of the parent clouds and friendly heavens on its smiling face; yet sometimes, unawares, as by a thief in the night, scummed o'er and bound with icy fetters, till it seemed all hard and cold as death; yet flowing all the purer away down below, till soon the sun returns to break its icy bands, which go crushed and crackling to the boundless deep, as it all moves forwards now, with a dignity and silence of its own, every obstacle surmounted, every boulder buried in its depths, hastening slowly on to join the mother Main, the great earth-circling, ever-living Sea (kept fresh by its very saltness), from which, indeed, by invisible evaporations, it all at first arose.

It was also here in Italy that he wrote his last, and longest, and most unfinished poem-of which he himself is again the hero-and which has been condemned and branded almost more than "Cain." But this poem, "Don Juan," considered simply as a portraiture of one phase of the aristocratic life of the time, has been pronounced by impartial judges as one of the best of the century. That he has here rehearsed, in golden verse, scenes often, and perhaps better, left untold, will not be denied; but then, it is still an open question, since the days of Solomon, whether a poet's admitted license compels him to portray the good alone, and to turn a blind eye on all the bad. The novelist or poet does not necessarily make the bad; he only photographs it, and is not directly responsible for its existence.

But that was a convulsed, unsettled age, in literature as in politics. Byron lived on stormy seas, mid stormy scenes and stormy men, and was heir to stormy blood.

Events marched rapidly. In 1822 the Insurrection in Greece gained many friends in England, and a chief was wanted to direct the funds sent out to Greece. All eyes now turned on Byron, who had so often sung of Grecian liberty before.

The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung.

The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free.
For, standing on the Persians' grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

So after some hesitation on "the blind chances of " Byron left Italy, and sailed for Greece. He equipped a fleet at his own cost, and was appointed to command an expedition against the Turks. His name, his fame, his influence, his advent, acted like magic on the Greeks, and 'twas said they looked for his arrival as if he had been their Messiah.

And now we find this young and gifted poet, at the age of 36, with perhaps his better genius yet undiscovered, and presumably with time before him to counteract some hasty lines, and leave new beauties to our literature; we find this noble bard, who had been the melancholy schoolboy, the voyaging "Childe Harold," the darling of the elite of London, lionised, married, separated; had been the Alpine solitary wanderer, the amorous Don Juan, the gossip of Venice, Italy, Europe, and America; who had been everything and everywhere, having run almost the gauntlet of existence, we find him now at last engaged in the turmoils of war; a leader of brave men, whom Roman force and Turkish fraud had crushed in slavery for near 2,000 years; we see him admiral and general by turns, on sea and on land, with Europe and the world watching the anxious struggle for the emancipation of that ancient, classic Grecian race, undoubtedly the cleverest race of men that have ever appeared upon our earth. And that young Grecian nation, which was about to break its chains, now held out to him its crown as first king of new-born Greece, to him who was himself of kingly blood, and who had lent his pen, his time, his name, his fortune, and at last his life for her deliverance; for whilst encamped upon the pestilential moors of Messolonghi, we see him smitten by the fever, and on the 19th

April, 1824, among his last incoherent mutterings, about his child and sister, as in delirium he imagines he is leading on the Greeks against Lepanto, we hear him shouting from his dying couch, as he virtually had done all through his life, "Forward! forward! follow me!"

And thus and there he died. And what his brother bard, Sir Walter Scott, has said, may here serve as epitaph upon his tomb:-And thus when death came to find him out, it found him out in no moment of revelry, but sacrificing his health, his fortune, and his life for the cause of his brother men, for liberty, equality, fraternity.

This Series will contain:

BURNS.

BYRON.

MOORE.

SCOTT.

SHELLEY.

And Others.

W. CLARKE ROBINSON, B.Sc., M.A., PH.D., University Extension Lecturer; sometime Lecturer in the University of Durham, England.

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO

JAMES A. M'NEILL, ESQ., B.A., CAMPBELL COLLEGE, BELFAST.

VERY person has some standard or ideal; and every nation has some standard or ideal person, who is regarded as its representative or chief

exponent in the various lines of life, such as war, politics, commerce, law, music, painting, or poetry. Greece had in painting its Apelles, in sculpture its Phidias, in eloquence its Demosthenes, in philosophy its Socrates, in poetry its Homer. Rome had in generalship its Julius Cæsar, in jurisprudence its Justinian, in eloquence its Cicero, in poetry its Virgil. Judea had in philosophy its Solomon, in generalship its Moses, in poetry its David. Italy had in painting its Raphael, in sculpture its Canova, in poetry its Dante. France had in fighting its Napoleon, in philosophy its Descartes, in

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