evening, at the hour of eight, I again knocked at the Astrologer's door, and in a few minutes I was in the apartment I have just described. It was a dull night, and the few stars which twinkled in the firmament shed but a feeble and uncertain light. The room was dark, but I could just discern that a huge telescope slood by the window, through which its owner was looking. The casement was thrown open, and the night wind sighed mournfully among the leaves of some creeping shrubs whose luxuriant branches had almost covered the lattice.

"Well,' said I, old friend, what good fortune hast thou in store for me?' "My son,' replied the Astrologer, 'I counsel thee to depart, and vex not thyself with what may befal thee; little of that which gladdeth the heart have 1 to tell thee this night.'

"These words threw a damp upon my spirits, which had been excited by a glass or two of mine host's choicest liquieures ; but ashamed to show any thing savouring of weakness, I boldly said:

"It boots not, old man, whether I know my fate now, or at another season. I fear not death, for I am about to adopt a dangerous profession; and it matters not if my blood is shed by the lance of a Spaniard, or the knife of some Flemish boor. Let me know my destiny at once.' "Thou art a vain youth,' replied the Astrologer, yet I would render thy short life less wretched had I mine own will, though thou art of that country which has so long scourged mine. Thou art a heretic, but I would not be one to make thee miserable.'

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"A truce to this,' said I, let me know what thou hast discovered; commence your work, or I shall depart and proclaim thee a cheat to all the people of Paris.'

“They know otherwise,” replied the old man, and thou shalt, ere long, be added to the list of the believers :-come hither.' I advanced to the window. 'Look up,' he continued, see'st thou yon pale star over that mill? 'Tis the planet that rules thy destiny: before the moon is out 'twill glow with a deep red. Beware of fraud-of subtlety-of false friends, when its colour changes. I say, young Englishman, when that star shall assume a crimson hue, thy life will be in danger.' I fixed my eyes intently on the heavens for some moments, to watch the different stars that splangled the firmament, though at intervals they were hidden by the dense clouds that floated across them; and noted the planet thou now see'st burning with its ominous hue I then quitted the house, too

above us.

much absorbed in my own reflections to venture another question.

"Ere the moon was out, a quarrel with a Spaniard in the streets of Paris ended in the death of my antagonist, and I received a wound so severe that it endangered my life. I well remember that on the night of the rencounter yon star glowed as it does now. I tell thee, Eyland, this night will be fatal to some of us- -Art thou still incredulous?" "Your story is somewhat strange," replied his companions; "but such things are beneath a soldier's notice." "The soldier hazards his life in every engagement," said Marberoll," but he marches to the charge with a hope that he may escape, and that hope supports him in-Ha, what is that?"

This sudden exclamation alarmed Eyland who eagerly inquired what it meant. Marberoll replied by pointing to the hedge by the road side.

"I see it," said Eyland, " 'tis a solitary glow worm; courage man, thou tremblest like one in an ague fit. 'Tis the match of a Harquebuissier,"added Eyland, in a whisper," we are surrounded. Halt! comrades.' He had hardly given the word, when several sparks suddenly appeared in the high hedge which skirted the road side, and the next moment a volley was discharged with fatal precision into the midst of the troop, who returned the fire, but with little effect, for half their number were either unhorsed or slain by the enemy's discharge.

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Dismount," roared Eyland," and charge these rascals with your swords." For this, however, there was no time, for the Harquebuissiers falling back, a body of pikemen and halberdiers advanced to the charge, while their comrades at a distance poured their fatal shot upon the Englishmen, who, perched upon their horses, afforded an excellent mark to their enemies. All was wild confusion and uproar; the Englishmen fought desperately, but they were completely surrounded, and were but a poor match for the Spaniards, whose long weapons gave them a complete mastery. In a few mo ments the whole of the troop of pistoliers were either killed or taken prisoners. A shot passed through the sword-arm of Marberoll and completely disabled him, and Eyland had been struck down with the blow of a halbert. They were instantly bound and borne in triumph to the enemy's camp at a short distance, and which a turning in the road disclosed to the view of Marberoll and his companion. Several tents had been pitched round a mill on the road side, and as they advanced towards them the leader of the party

little traits that individualize and depict the poet in his undress, it shews us the great author with his friends and associates, and fully developes the lights and shadows of his powerful mind.

We would that our limits permitted us to give a more ample account of the contents of this bulky volume, but as it would occupy too much of our space, we can only select such portions as we think will prove most interesting to our readers.

That his Lordship's temper when a child, says Mr. M., "was violent, or rather sullenly passionate, is certain. Even when in petticoats he shewed the same uncontrollable spirit with his nurse, which he afterwards exhibited, when an author, with his critics. Being angrily reprimanded by her, one day, for having soiled or torn a new frock in which he had been just dressed, he got into one of his silent rages' (as he himself has described them,) seized the frock with both his hands, rent it from top to bottom, and stood in sullen stillness, setting his censurer and her wrath at defiance. But, notwithstanding this, and other such unruly outbreaks-in which he was but too much encouraged by the example of his mother, who frequently, it is said, proceeded to the same extremities with her caps, gowns, &c.-there was in his disposition, as appears from the concurrent testimony of nurses, tutors, and all who were employed about him, a mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by which it was impossible not to be attached; and which rendered him then, as in his riper years, easily manageable by those who loved and understood him sufficiently to be at once gentle and firm enough for the task."

Some incidents in his youth are thus given. "His love of solitary rambles, and his taste for exploring in all directions, led him not unfrequently so far as to excite serious apprehensions for his safety. While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home unperceived, -sometimes he would find his way to the seaside; and once, after a long and anxious search, they found the adventurous little rover struggling in a sort of morass or marsh, from which he was unable to extricate himself. In the course of one of his summer excursions up Dee-side, he had an opportunity of seeing still more of the wild beauties of the Highlands that even the neighbour hood of their residence at Ballatrech afforded-having been taken by his mother through the romantic passes that lead to Invercauld, and as far up as the small waterfall, called the Linn of Dee,

Here his love of adventure had nearly cost him his life. As he was scrambling along a declivity that overhung the fall, some heather caught his lame foot, and he fell. Already he was rolling downward, when the attendant luckily caught hold of him, and was but just in time to save him from being killed. It was about this period, when he was not quite eight years old, that a feeling partaking more of the nature of love than it is easy to believe possible in so young a child, took, according to his own account, entire possession of his thoughts, and shewed how early, in this passion, as in most others, the sensibilities of his nature were awakened. The name of the object of this attachment was Mary Duff; and the following passage from a journal, kept by him in 1813, will shew how freshly, after an interval of seventeen years, all the circumstances of this early love still lived in his memory. I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word. And the effect!-My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, 'Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart Mary Duff is married to a Mr. Coe.' And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions, and alarmed my mother so much, that, after I grew better, she generally avoided the subject to meand contented herself with telling it to all her acquaintance. Now, what could this be? I had never seen her since her mother's faux-pas at Aberdeen had been the cause of her removal to her grandmother's at Banff; we were both the merest children. I had and have been attached fifty times since that period; yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness, my tormenting my mother's maid to write for me to her, which she at last did, to quiet me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write, for myself, became my secretary. I remember, too, our walks, and the happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children's apartment, at their house not far from the Plainstones at Aberdeen, while her lesser sister Helen played with the doll, and we sat gravely making love, in our way. How the deuce did all this occur so early? where could it origi

ceived by him but coolly. No one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy. Peel, the orator and statesman (that was, or is, or is to be'), was my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove (a public school phrase). We were on good terms, but his brother was my intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel amongst us all, masters and scholars,→→→→ and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal; as a schoolboy, out of school, I was always in scrapes, and he never; and in school, he always knew his lesson, and I rarely, but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general information, history, &c. &c. I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing. The prodigy of our school days was George Sinclair (son of Sir John) he made exercises for half the school (literally), verses at will,

and themes without it.

He was a friend of mine, and in the same remove, and used at times to beg me to let him do my exercise, a request always most readily accorded upon a pinch, or when I wanted to do something else, which was usually once an hour. On the other hand, he was pacific, and I savage; so I fought for him, or thrashed others for him, or thrashed himself to make him thrash others, when it was necessary, as a point of honour and stature, that he should so chastise, or we talked politics, for he was a great politician, and were very good friends. I have some of his letters, written to me from school, still. Clayton was another school-monster of learning, and talent, and hope; but what has become of him I do not know. He was certainly a genius. My school friendships were with me passions (for I was always violent), but I do not know that there is one which has endured (to be sure some have been cut short by death) till now. That with Lord Clare begun one of the earliest and lasted longest-being only interrupted by distance that I know of. I never hear the word Clare' without a beating of the heart even now, and I write it with the feelings of 1803-4-5 ad infini

tum.'

"The general character which he bore among the masters at Harrow was that of an idle boy, who would never learn any thing; and, as far as regarded his tasks in school, this reputation was, by his own avowal, not ill founded. It is impossible, indeed, to look through the books which he had then in use, and which are scribbled over with clumsily

interlined translations, without being struck with the narrow extent of his classical attainments. The most ordinary Greeks words have their English signifi cation scrawled under them,-shewing too plainly that he was not sufficiently familiarised with their meaning to trust himself without this aid.

"But, notwithstanding his backwardness in the mere verbal scholarship, on which so large and precious a portion of life is wasted, in all that general and miscellaneous knowledge, which is alone useful in the world, he was making rapid and even wonderful progress. With a mind too inquisitive and excursive to be imprisoned within statutable limits, he flew to subjects that interested his already manly tastes, with a zest which it is in vain to expect that the mere pedantries of school could inspire; and the irregular, but ardent, snatches of study which he caught in this way gave to a mind like his an impulse forwards, which left more disciplined and plodding competitors far behind. The list, indeed, which he has left on record of the works, in all departments of literature, which he thus hastily and greedily devoured before he was fifteen years of age, is such as almost to startle belief, comprising, as it does, a range and variety of study, which might make much older heliuones librorum' hide their heads."

The following throws some light on the bard's early attachment for Miss Chaworth.

"When at Annesley, his time was mostly passed in riding with Miss Chaworth and her cousin,-sitting in idle reverie, as was his custom, pulling at his handkerchief, or in firing at a door which opens upon the terrace, and which still, I believe, bears the marks of his shots. But his chief delight was in sitting to hear Miss Chaworth play; and the pretty Welsh air Mary Anne,' was (partly, of course, on account of the name) his especial favourite. During all this time he had the pain of knowing that the heart of her he loved was occupied by another ;that, as he himself expressed it,

6

'Her sighs were not for him to her he was Even as a brother-but no more.'

Neither is it, indeed, probable, had even her affections been disengaged, that Lord Byron would, at this time, have been selected as the object of them. A seniority of two years gives to a girl on the eve of womanhood,' an advance into life, with which the boy keeps no proportionate pace. Miss Chaworth looked upon Byron as a mere schoolboy. He was in his man