The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1875-12-22
sRNTIN I'LL SUPPLEME EMIT

House of Lords tempts CASTELAR, into an &C
count of his own sensations on seeing for the
nrst time the Houses Of Parliament, the
Cathedral of Toledo, the Coliseum Of Rome
and the Cemetery of Pisa Sometimes these
episodes are fine specimens of rhetoric or
poetic analysis, but at others they become
wearisome, as interrupting with the refiec-
tons OF the individual author what the
reader rightly expects to be devoted to the
Immediate subject OF his book. Here is a
pen picture of the personnel of Byron which
is worthy OF quotation: His remarkable
! face;
THE BEAUTY OF HIS GREC1AN HEAD:
his spacious forehead; his srched eyebrows;
the depth of his eyes, which in repose as
sumed the pure blue of the heavens, but
which any emotion dsepened to black, like
an ocean of changing thoughts; the perfect
line of his lips, sculptured as if TO vibrate
eternal harmony; his aquiline nose; his
oearo, divided with Incompatible grace: his
olympic gestures; his majestic attitude; his
statellness, tempered by softness; the genius
flashing from his features; his pale and del
lcate complexion, resembling the color OF
antique marble, gilded by the suns of centu-
rles; all his being, all his person, declared
tbaS, In chiselliDg that periecs vase, the Gre
ator did not design that it should remain
empty, but be filled with immortal fra
GRANGE. astonishing fexibility," saws
Castelar,, sis distinctive characteristic
OF the poet" The picturesque description
OF BVron's Eastern wanderings, his travels
In Albania and Greece, abounOs with the
most romantic and fascinating scenery.
Castelar's extremely brief account of the
suppressed memoirs of Byron is as follows
Inc memoirs, which the poet wrote in a
style superior even to his verses, if we can
1ucge by some remaining fragments, those
sketches which would have been one of the
most faithful historic testimonies of the
times, have disappeared through the prudery
OF the English aristocracy, who were there
painted nude, according to the method OF
great artists. He gave up his
memoirs to Moore. But Moore, who was
crafty and cold hearted, incapable of telling
truth, and DESTROYS TO frequent high So
ciety, becoming the possessor of tragic and
comic descriptions of ladies of rank and
thinking It
UNwIsE TO REVEAL THEIR SECRETS,
broke the mirror in which posterity could
have been the face of the great poet and of
his epoch. Castelar, does not fail to pay a
high compliment to Byron for the tone and
spirit OF his three speeches in Parliament, all
in support of the rights of the people, and of
progress as against privilege. Indeed, he
claims Byron as an aristocratic republican
man who left many traces of bis intelli-
gence behind as constant defender of the
cause of liberty, Here is a sentence which
is orator Castelar's panegyric upon elo-
quence: Eloquence Is the angels trumpet,
which calls down the judgment of God upon
tyrants and unfolds the infinite joys of a
new existence. The singular parsdoXes of
Lord Byron's life, character and
writings have nowhere found more elo-
quent summing up than the following by
our author: He believed that to live was to
feel everything; to experience everything;
to pass through the different gradstions OF
the warmth of universal lite: to plunge
heavily in the depths of the ocean, like the
fishes: to scale the snowy peaks, like the
eagles; to roll among the dry leaves of
autumn; to trample on the SHOWS of win
ter; TO languish under the burning sun of
summer; TO hover, like the butterfly, among
the spring flowers; TO be a pilgrim, wander
ing continually from the Alhambra to the |
Vatican, from the Vatican to the Parthenon,
from the Parthenon to the Pyramids; to be
the orator who wrestles in the tribune, and
the brawler who fights in the streets; to be
the aristocrat, the noble who rejoices in
THE REMEMBRANCE OF HIS BLAzoNINGs,
and in the pride of his long descent, and
the democrat, the man of the people, who |
protests against all tyrannies and demands |
complete liberty; to be by turns cenobite |
and an epicure; chaste and voluptuous; |
skeptical and believing; criminal and an /
apostle; an enemy of humanity and a |
an angel and a demon, as
Il his spirit embraced all things and all
IDEAS; as If his being was the abstract of all |
lite; his personality the protagonist of the
grand scene OF the universe, of the great
tragedy of history. Elsewhere CASTELAR, says
Of his subject and the estimate of him by
his English countrymen. No people ever
hated man as the British people hated
Byron, and yet no race was ever more faith
fully represented In its characteristic quail
les, and above all in its naughty individu-
Atty, than the English people were repre-
;ented by Byron.