"I have since visited his tomb. It is in an old gray country church, venerable with the lapse of centuries. He lies buried beneath the pavement, at one end of the principal aisle. A light falls upon the spot through the stained glass of a gothic window, and a tablet on the adjacent wall announces the family vault of the Byrons. It had been the wayward intention of the poet to be entombed with his faithful dog in the monument erected by him in the garden of Newstead Abbey. His executors showed better judgment and feeling, in consigning his ashes to the family sepulchre, to mingle with those of his mother and his kindred.
"How nearly did his dying hour realize the wish made by him but a few years previously in one of his fitful moods of melancholy and misanthropy:
"'When time, or soon or late, shall bring, The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead, Oblivion! may thy languid wing Wave gently o'er my dying bed!
No band of friends or heirs be there, To weep or wish the coming blow: No maiden with dishevelled hair, To feel or feign decorous woe.
But silent let me sink to earth, With no officious mourners near: I would not mar one hour of mirth, Nor startle friendship with a fear.'
"He died among strangers, in a foreign land, without a kindred hand to close his eyes, yet he did not die unwept. With all his faults, and errors, and passions, and caprices, he had the gift of attaching his humble dependants warmly to him. One of them, a poor Greek, accompanied his remains to England, and followed them to the grave. I am told that during the ceremony, he stood holding on by a pew in an agony of grief, and when all was over, seemed as if he would have gone down into the tomb with his master.--A nature that could inspire such attachments, must have been generous and beneficent."
THE CONQUEST OF FLORIDA, by Hernando de Soto; by Theodore Irving. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard.
There is so much of romance in the details of Spanish conquests in America, that a history of any one of the numerous expeditions for discovery and conquest, possesses the charm of the most elaborate fiction, even while it bears the marks of general truth. These adventures occurred during the age of chivalry, when danger was courted for distinction, before the progress of science and literature had opened other avenues to renown, and when personal valor was looked upon as the pre-eminent quality--skill in arms as the highest accomplishment of an aspiring spirit. No nation was more celebrated during that chivalrous age than Spain, and in none did the genius of chivalry longer resist the influences under which it finally fell into decay. Upon the discovery of America, a wide field was opened for the warlike spirit of the age, and Spain sent forth her hosts of adventurers, filled with wild visions of boundless wealth, and the easy conquest of the barbarian nations of those golden regions. There are in the histories of their exploits, so many displays of dauntless courage--of skill in overcoming difficulties--of the power of a few disciplined warriors, to contend successfully with hosts of equally brave, but untutored savages--and so many exhibitions of the generous qualities of the soldier, that in the glare of brilliant achievements, and the excitement of thrilling incident, we are tempted to overlook the injustice and cruelty which marked the footsteps of the conquerors.
