The Sun.
London, England, 1869-09-14 00:00:00

parts of her character more than I do ; but she has
condemned herself by her breach of her once
honourable silence, and by the irreparable wrong
done to Byron by the destruction of his justi-
ficatory case.

Once more, and finally, for with this I close my
earnest protest on this subject, I exhort you, my
'countrymen, to revert to and to hold fast and im-
moveably by those great principles of justice which
have distinguished us in all ages. "No man," says
our law and our deepest moral sentiment, " shall
be condemned unheard." But if Lord Byron be
condemned it must be unheard. Ills lady has
murdered him in his sleep ; in the last great sleep
as it regards this world. She has stifled his voice
from the tomb. And let her not persuade you,
_under these circumstances, that even his poetry is
a sham, an empty, theatric impersonation studiously
got up for effect. In whatever he wrote, Byron
was only too real. At midnight, over his gin-
and-water, penning " Don Juan," his mind floated
in the sphere of a lawless world and its reminis-
cences. When he A rote his dark dramas of " Cain "
and " Manfred," he was anxiously endeavouring to
probe those gloomy mysteries of a corrupted
human nature, which Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe
had explored before him, and, contemporaneously,
Shelley, yet with no man accusing them of incest.
In " Childe Harold" he shut out the lower and in-
jurious world and its associations, and rose into a
nobler and purer element. lie ascended into rap-
port with the spirit of the august and eternal moun-
tains, and their sublime sense of purity and awe.
A voice of loftiest inspiration, a loving, genuine
voice of man's highest and noblest inspirations
then awoke in him. In that spirit he wrote one of
the sweetest and noblest poems which live in any
language—a poem which breathes the true trumpet
tones of imperishable freedom ; a tone of God's and
man's justice to universal man, a glorious heritage
of our language and our common nature ; a tone
even of religion with which the mathematical
mediocrity which now seeks to crush him could
never sympathise, because it could not live up and
into it.

Great, immense allowances are to be made for a
man like Byron, struggling with a blood and
constitution infected by a mad and wicked ances-
try. It might be a great misfortune for Lady
Byron to marry such a man—which she did with
her eyes oyen—but it was a terrible one for him to
marry a woman who could desert him living and de-
fame him dead. Poor Byron ! But, spite of all
nature's and woman's wrongs ; spite of all defama-
tory efforts, his best sentiments shall animate our
children to the love of liberty, of nature, and of
patriotism as long as the nation and its language
last. And if they descend to his less hallowed
themes, they will do it at their own peril and re-
sponsibility, as they do when they indulge in the
grossnesses of Ovid and Catullus, of Sterne and
Smollett, of Voltaire, Rabelais, and Paul de Kock ;
or wilfully seek the scenes of the degraded life of
our present corrupted cities.
With these words I close my part in this contro-
versy, and wait for the authoritative words of those
few who aro the only ones in a position to pro-
nounce them.—l am, &c.,

WILLIAM lIowITT.

Penmaenmaur, Sept. 10.

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