The Sun.
London, England, 1830-10-01 00:00:00

LORD BYRON'S NOTIONS OF LOVE.

It is singular, and I am not aware it has been
before noticed, that with all his tender and im-
passioned apostrophes to beauty and love, Byron
has in no instance, not even in the freest pas-
sages of Don Juan, associated either the one or
the other with sensual images. The extrava-
gance of Shakspeare's Juliet, when she speaks
of Romeo being cut after death into stars, that
all the world may be in love with night, is flame
and ecstasy compared to the icy metaphysical
glitter of Byron's amorous allusions. The verses
beginning with
" She walks in beauty like the light
Of eastern climes and sorry skies,"
is a perfect example of what I have conceived
of his bodiless admiration of beauty, and object-
less enthusiasm of love. The sentiment itself is
unquestionably in the highest mood of the in-
tellectual sense of beauty ; the simile is, however,
,any thing but such an image as the beauty of
woman would suggest. It is only the remem7
brance of some impression or imagination of the
loveliness of a twilight applied to an object that
Awakened the same abstract general idea of
beauty. The fancy which could conceive in its
passion the charms of a fetnale to
.be like the
glow of the evening, or the general effect of the
midnight stars, must have been enamoured of
some beautiful abstraction, rather than aught of
flesh and blood. Poets and lovers have com-
pared the complexion of their mistresses to the
Ilues of the morning or of the evening, and their
eyes to the dew,drops and the stars; but it has no
place in the feelings of man to think of female
charms in the sense of admiration which the
beauties of the.morning or the evening awaken;
It is to make the • simile the prnicipalq---.
There is upOn the frilbjeet -'of love, no' doubt,
much beautiful composition throughout his
works ; but not one line in all the thousands
which shows a sexual feeling of female attraction
—all is vague and passionless, save in the deli-
cious rhythm oldie verse.—Galt's Life ofßyron.

THE THREE WANDERERS, ALVARO

AND lIIS COMPANIONS.

The, three wanderers suffered severely at the
outset of their journey ; the first tribe they en-
countered was the most barbarous they ever met
With.' The wretched Spaniards were reduced to
slavery, and compelled to subsist on worms,
Ipathsdtne reptiles, fish bones, and even vynoti.—
The salvages,. their masters,' were in that,ahject
chndition: in Which parental attaclunent is un-
eipmal to the care of rearing a ; ',and it wiis
their practice to expose all their female offspring.
When the 4ununot arriVed, arid: the woods were
loaded with fruits, Alvaro and
.his companions
contrived to escape during the festiyitieem which
the savages celebrated,this seatin of temporary_
,alnindance.' The Indian nation .which he next
arrived at offered him a better reception ; and
the respect shown to him as a stranger vras very
much increased when he began to display his
medical skill; for he bad learned on ,The coast
that pretensions of this sort might be profit-
ably united to the business of a merchant...-.
By blowing on his patients, or mutter-
ing certain words, according to the na-
ture of the case, he wrought many won-
derful cures, and, as he relates, on one occa-
sion even raised a dead man to life r' nor will
this bold assertion shake our confidence in the
general veracity of hisl narrative, when we con-
sidert- how easy'it is to work miracles among the
ignorant ; and how nattirally we imbibe the most
aisurd persuasions, •if they tend ro raise us in
our own esteem. The three Spaniards, now
reverenced as the children of the sun, were
escorted in their. journey to the west by a troop'
of their admirers, .who proclaimed as 'they went
along their •wondrims virtues and' preternatural
gifts; and this impulse, once given to the :Innen!,
stitious admiration of time Indians, was easily
propagated from tribe to tribe., Alvaro, tra-
velling' westward, crossed a great river (the
Mississippi),, and then entered 'upon those
deserts which . separate the territories of
Mexico frottt those of the United States...-1
In answer to his inquiries ,respecting the
Christians, he was informed that a wicked
nation si? named' dwelt 'to the south-
west ; Anti was warned not to have any dealing
with that mischievous- and inhuman people.
These .-aecusations he ;found *to be not quite
groundless ; for,yvhen he approached the Maxi-
can frontiers, it was with difficulty he could pre-
vent the Spaniards
.from reducing to slavery the
Indians who accompanied' him as guides t, and
-when he'rernonstrat&l with thern,for their brutal
conduct he was himself made prisoner, and ex-
perienteit greater severities from his own coon-
trymen.than from nny,of the savage tribes among
whom he Pail wandered. When he arrived m
the interim of
,the country, however, where the
manners of the colimists were less violent and
lieentlinis than on the borders, he was treated
with abundant-courtesy and respect, and liberally
supplied with, every Huang he wanted. In the
folowing year,ime embarked for Europe, and ar,
rivdd id Lisbon in August, 1537.--Dr. Lard-
ner's Cabinet Cyclopedia, Vol. XT.