L.

Had stood the test of mortal enmities

But Thou, exulting and abounding river! Making their waves a blessing as they flow Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever Could man but leave thy bright creation so, Nor its fair promise from the surface mow With the sharp scythe of conflict, then to see Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know Earth paved like heaven; and to seem such to me, Even now what wants thy stream?—that it should Lethe be.

LI.

A thousand battles have assail'd thy banks,
But these and half their fame have pass'd away,
And Slaughter heap'd on high his weltering ranks;
Their very graves are gone, and what are they?
Thy tide wash'd down the blood of yesterday,
And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream
Glass'd with its dancing light the sunny ray!
But o'er the blacken'd memory's blighting dream
Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem.
LII.

Thus Harold inly said, and pass'd along,
Yet not insensibly to all which here
Awoke the jocund birds to early song

In glens which might have made even exile dear:
Though on his brow were graven lines austere,
And tranquil sternness which had ta'en the place
Of feelings fierier far but less severe,

Joy was not always absent from his face, [trace. But o'er it in such scenes would steal with transient

LIII.

Nor was all love shut from him, though his days Of passion had consumed themselves to dust. It is in vain that we would coldly gaze On such as smile upon us; the heart must Leap kindly back to kindness, though disgust Hath wean'd it from all worldlings: thus he felt, For there was soft remembrance, and sweet trust In one fond breast, to which his own would melt, | And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt.

LIV.

And he had learn'd to love,-I know not why, For this in such as him seems strange of mood,The helpless looks of blooming infancy, Even in its earliest nurture: what subdued, To change like this, a mind so far imbued With scorn of man, it little boots to know; But thus it was; and though in solitude Small power the nipp'd affections have to grow, In him this glow'd when all beside had ceased to glow.

LV.

And there was one soft breast, as hath been said,
Which unto his was bound, by stronger ties
Than the church links withal; and, though unwed,
That love was pure, and, far above disguise,

(1) The castle of Drachenfels stands on the highest summit of the Seven Mountains," over the Rhine banks: it is in ruins, and connected with some singular traditions. It is the first in view on the road from Bonn, but on the opposite side of the river; on this bank, nearly facing it, are the remains of another, called the Jew's Castle, and a large cross, commemorative of the murder of a chief by

Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long delighted The stranger fain would linger on his way! Thine is a scene alike where souls united Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray; And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey On self-condemning bosoms, it were here, Where nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year. LX.

Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!

There can be no farewell to scene like thine,
The mind is colour'd by thy every hue,
And if reluctantly the eyes resign

(1) The monument of the young and lamented General Marceau (killed by a rifle-ball at Alterkirchen, on the last day of the fourth year of the French republic) still remains as described. The inscriptions on his monument are rather too long, and not required: his name was enough; France adored, and her enemies admired; both wept over him. His funeral was attended by the generals and detachments from both armies. In the same grave General Hoche is interred, a gallant man also in every sense of the word; but though he distinguished himself greatly in battle, he had not the good fortune to die there: his death was attended by suspicions of poison. A separate monument (not over his body, which is buried by Marceau's) is raised for him near Andernach, opposite to which one of his most memorable exploits was performed, in throwing a bridge to an island on the Rhine. The shape and style are different from that of Marceau's, and the inscription more simple and pleasing:-"The Army of the Sambre and Meuse to its Commander-in-Chief Hoche." This is all, and as it should be. Hoche was esteemed among the first of France's earlier generals, before Buonaparte monopolised her triumphs. He was the destined commander of the invading army of Ireland. (2) Ehrenbreitstein, i. e. "the broad stone of honour," one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, was dismantled and blown up by the French at the truce of Leoben. It had been, and could only be, reduced by famine or treachery. It yielded to the former, aided by surprise. After having seen the fortifications of Gibraltar and Malta, it did not much strike by comparison; but the situation is command

Their cherish'd gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine! (3) "Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise; More mighty spots may rise-more glaring shine, But none unite in one attaching maze

The brilliant, fair, and soft,—the glories of old days, LXI.

The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen, The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom, The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between, The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been In mockery of man's art; and these withal A race of faces happy as the scene, Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, Still springing o'er thy banks, though empires near them fall.

While Waterloo with Canna's carnage vies,
Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand;
They were true Glory's stainless victories,
Won by the unambitious heart and hand

ing. General Marceau besieged it in vain for some time, and I slept in a room where I was shown a window at which he is said to have been standing observing the progress of the siege by moonlight, when a ball struck immediately below it.

(3) On taking Hockheim, the Austrians, in one part of the engagement, got to the brow of the hill, whence they had their first view of the Rhine. They instantly haltednot a gun was fired-not a voice heard: but they stood gazing on the river with those feelings which the events of the last fifteen years at once called up. Prince Schwartzenberg rode up to know the cause of this sudden stop; then they gave three cheers, rushed after the enemy, and drove them into the water. - L. E.

(4) The chapel is destroyed, and the pyramid of bones diminished to a small number by the Burgundian legion in the service of France; who anxiously effaced this record of their ancestors' less successful invasions. A few still remain, notwithstanding the pains taken by the Burgundians for ages (all who passed that way removing a bone to their own country), and the less justifiable larcenies of the Swiss postilions, who carried them off to sell for knifehandles; a purpose for which the whiteness imbibed by the bleaching of years had rendered them in great request. Of these relics I ventured to bring away as much as may have made a quarter of a hero, for which the sole excuse is, that if I had not, the next passer-by might have perverted them to worse uses than the careful preservation which I intend for them.

(1) Aventicum, near Morat, was the Roman capital of Helvetia, where Avenches now stands.

(2) Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain endeavour to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Cæcina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago;-it is thus:-"Julia Alpinula: Hic jaceo. Infelicis patris infelix proles. Deæ Aventiæ Sacerdos. Exorare patris necem non potui: Male mori in fatis ille erat. Vixi annos xxIII."-I know of no human composition so affecting as this, nor a history of deeper interest. These are the names and actions which ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy tenderness, from the wretched and glittering detail of a confused mass of conquests and battles, with which the mind is roused for a time to a false and feverish sympathy, from whence it recurs at length with all the nausea consequent on such intoxication.

(3) This is written in the eye of Mont Blanc (June 3d, 1816), which even at this distance dazzles mine.-(July 20th.) I this day observed for some time the distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentière in the calm of the lake, which I was crossing in my boat; the distance of these mountains from their mirror is sixty miles.

(4) In the exquisite lines which the poet, at this time, addressed to his sister, there is this touching stanza :"I did remind thee of our own dear lake By the old ball which may be mine no more. The lake of Newstead Abbey.

There is too much of man here, to look through With a fit mind the might which I behold; But soon in me shall Loneliness renew Thoughts hid, but not less cherish'd than of old, Ere mingling with the herd had penn'd me in their fold.

LXIX.

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind:
All are not fit with them to stir and toil,
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind
Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil

In the hot throng, where we become the spoil
Of our infection, till too late and long

We may deplore and struggle with the coil, In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong, 'Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.

LXX.

There, in a moment, we may plunge our years
In fatal penitence, and in the blight
Of our own soul turn all our blood to tears,
And colour things to come with hues of Night;
The race of life becomes a hopeless flight
To those that walk in darkness: on the sea,
The boldest steer but where their ports invite,
But there are wanderers o'er Eternity

Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor'd ne'er shall be.

LXXI.

Is it not better, then, to be alone,

And love Earth only for its earthly sake?
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, (5)
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
A fair but froward infant her own care,
Kissing its cries away as these awake;—
Is it no better thus our lives to wear,
Than join the crushing crowd, doom'd to inflict or bear?
LXXII.

I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling, (6) but the hum
Of human cities torture: I can see

Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake
The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:
Sad havoc Time must with my memory make
Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;
Though, like all things which I have loved, they are
Resign'd for ever, or divided far."-L. E.

(5) The colour of the Rhone at Geneva is blue, to a depth of tint which I have never seen equalled in water, salt or fresh, except in the Mediterranean and Archipelago. -[See Don Juan, canto xiv. stanza 87, for a beautiful comparison.-L. E.]

(6) "Mr. Hobhouse and myself are just returned from a journey of lakes and mountains. We have been to the Grindelwald, and the Jungfrau, and stood on the summit of the Wengen Alp; and seen torrents of 900 feet in fall, and glaciers of all dimensions; we have heard shepherds' pipes, and avalanches, and looked on the clouds foaming up from the valleys below us like the spray of the ocean of hell. Chamouni, and that which it inherits, we saw a month ago; but, though Mont Blanc is higher, it is not equal in wildness to the Jungfrau, the Eighers, the Shreckhorn, and the Rose Glaciers. Besides this, I have been over all the Bernese Alps and their lakes, and think many of the scenes (some of which were not those usually frequented by the English) finer than Chamouni. I have been to Clarens again, and crossed the mountains behind it." B. Letters, Sept. 1816.-L. E.

Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,

Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.

LXXIII.

And thus I am absorb'd, and this is life.
I look upon the peopled desert past
As on a place of agony and strife,

Where, for some sin, to sorrow I was cast,
To act and suffer, but remount at last,
With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring,
Though young, yet waxing vigorous, as the blast
Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,
Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being
cling.

LXXIV.

And when, at length, the mind shall be all free From what it hates in this degraded form, Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be Existent happier in the fly and worm,-When elements to elements conform, And dust is as it should be, shall I not Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm? The bodiless thought? the spirit of each spot? Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?

LXXV.

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion? should I not contemn All objects, if compared with these? and stem A tide of suffering, rather than forego Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm Of those whose eyes are only turn'd below, Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow?

LXXVI.

But this is not my theme; and I return
To that which is immediate, and require
Those who find contemplation in the urn,
To look on one, whose dust was once all fire,

(I) "I have traversed all Rousseau's ground with the Heloise before me, and am struck to a degree that I cannot express with the force and accuracy of his descriptions, and the beauty of their reality. Meillerie, Clarens, and Vevay, and the Château de Chillon, are places of which I shall say little; because all I could say must fall short of the impressions they stamp." B. Letters.-L. E.

(2) "It is evident that the impassioned parts of Rousseau's romance had made a deep impression upon the feelings of the noble poet. The enthusiasm expressed by Lord Byron is no small tribute to the power possessed by Jean Jacques over the passions: and, to say truth, we needed some such evidence; for, though almost ashamed to avow the truth, still, like the barber of Midas, we must speak or die, we have never been able to feel the interest or discover the merit of this far-famed performance. That there is much eloquence in the letters we readily admit: there lay Rousseau's strength. But his lovers, the celebrated St. Preux and Julie, have, from the earliest moment we have heard the tale (which we well remember), down to the present hour, totally failed to interest us. There might be some constitutional hardness of heart; but like Lance's pebble-hearted cur, Crab, we remained dry-eyed while all wept around us. And still, on resuming the volume, even now, we can see little in the loves of these two tiresome pedants to interest our feelings for either of them. To state our opinion in language' much better than • "See Burke's Reflections."

A native of the land where I respire The clear air for a while-a passing guest, Where he became a being,-whose desire Was to be glorious; 'twas a foolish quest, The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest.

LXXVII.

Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, (1) The apostle of affliction, he who threw Enchantment over passion, and from woe Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew How to make madness beautiful, and cast O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue (2) Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast.

LXXVIII.

His love was passion's essence—as a tree
On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
Thus, and enamour'd, were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal beauty, which became

In him existence, and o'erflowing teems
Along his burning page, distemper'd though it seems.

LXXIX.

This breathed itself to life in Julie, this Invested her with all that's wild and sweet; This hallow'd, too, the memorable kiss (3) Which every morn his fever'd lip would greet, From hers, who but with friendship his would meet; But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast Flash'd the thrill'd spirit's love-devouring heat; In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest. (4)

LXXX.

His life was one long war with self-sought foes, Or friends by him self-banish'd; for his mind Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose, For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind,

our own, we are unfortunate enough to regard this farfamed history of philosophical gallantry as an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness; of metaphysical speculations, blended with the coarsest sensuality.'" Sir Walter Scott.-L. E.

(3) This refers to the account in his Confessions of his passion for the Comtesse d'Houde tot (the mistress of St. Lambert), and his long walk every morning, for the sake of the single kiss which was the common salutation of French acquaintance. Rousseau's description of his feelings on this occasion may be considered as the most passionate, yet not impure, description and expression of love that ever kindled into words; which, after all, must be felt, from their very force, to be inadequate to the delineation: a painting can give no sufficient idea of the ocean.

(4) "Lord Byron's character of Rousseau is drawn with great force, great power of discrimination, and great eloquence. I know not that he says any thing which has not been said before, but what he says issues, apparently, from the recesses of his own mind. It is a little laboured, which, possibly, may be caused by the form of the stanza into which it was necessary to throw it; but it cannot be doubted that the poet felt a sympathy for the enthusiastic tenderness of Rousseau's genius, which he could not have recognised with such extreme fervour, except from a consciousness of having at least occasionally experienced similar emotions." Sir E. Brydges.-L. E.

(1) During Lord Byron's stay in Switzerland, he took up his residence at the well-known Campagne-Diodati, in the village of Coligny. It stands at the top of a rapidly-descending vineyard; the windows commanding, one way, a noble view of the lake and of Geneva; the other, up the lake. Every evening the poet embarked on the lake; and to the feelings created by these excursions we owe these delightful stanzas. Of his mode of passing a day, the following, from the Journal already referred to, is a pleasant specimen :

"September 18. Called. Got up at five. Hobhouse walked on before. Rode till within a mile of Vevay. Stopped at Vevay two hours. View from the church-yard superb; within it Ludlow (the regicide's) monument-black marble -long inscription; Latin, but simple. Near him Broughton (who read King Charles's sentence to Charles Stuart) is buried, with a queer and rather canting inscription. Ludlow's house shown. Walked down to the lake side; servants, carriages, saddle-horses,-all set off, and left us plantes la by some mistake. Hobhouse ran on before, and overtook them. Arrived at Clarens. Went to Chillon

LXXXV.

Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved, That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

LXXXVI.

It is the hush of night, and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen, Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear Precipitously steep; and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more:

LXXXVII.

He is an evening reveller, who makes His life an infancy, and sings his fill; At intervals, some bird from out the brakes Starts into voice a moment, then is still. There seems a floating whisper on the hill, But that is fancy, for the starlight dews All silently their tears of love instil, Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues. (:) Weeping themselves away, till they infuse

LXXXVIII.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven,

That, in our aspirations to be great,

Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are

A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

LXXXIX.

All heaven and earth are still-though not in sleep, But breathless, as we grow when feeling most; And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:All heaven and earth are still: from the high host

through scenery worthy of I know not whom; went over the castle again. Met an English party in a carriage; a lady in it fast asleep-fast aleep in the most anti-narcotic spot in the world,-excellent! After a slight and short dinner, visited the Château de Clarens. Saw all worth seeing, and then descended to the Bosquet de Julie,' etc. etc. our guide full of Rousseau, whom he is eternally confounding with St. Preux, and mixing the man and the book. Went again as far as Chillon, to revisit the little torrent from the hill behind it. The corporal who showed the wonders of Chillon was as drunk as Blucher, and (to my mind) as great a man: he was deaf also; and, thinking every one else so, roared out the legends of the castle so fearfully, that Hobhouse got out of humour. However, we saw things, from the gallows to the dungeons. Sunset reflected in the lake. Nine o'clock-going to bed. Have to get up at five to-morrow."-After Lord Byron quitted the Campagne-Diodati, Sir Egerton Brydges tells us, that the doors of the house were beset by travellers, anxious to get a sight of the room in which the poet slept.-L. E.