ley.)—The interest in Lord Byr on's personality is so greatly
diminished of late years that it is, we think, doubtful whether the republication of a Journal which has no raison d'aire save as a record of the poet's egotism, will attract modern readers. As a poet, too, Byron has lost favour with the present generation, and whether rightly or wrongly we need not now consider, is dis- paraged by critics. Moreover, the editor's share in the reissue of a once promising book is not likely to enhance its value. If his Memoir has the merit of brevity, it has the fault of incom- pleteness, and comes suddenly to a conclusion about twenty years before the death of the Countess of Blessington. Those were years, as it has been truly said, of "splendid misery" in London, in which she and Count D'Orsay lived on a scale of magnificence which could with difficulty have been supported on double Lady Blessington's income. That the Count, who was "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," should have boon forced ulti- mately to escape from England because he could not pay his bootmaker, was an ignoble ending of a showy career. The break- up at Gore House in 1849 closed a course seldom surpassed for recklessness of extravagance. Lady Blessington was as much sinned against as sinning. Her father, a brutal man who was tried for murder and acquitted, forced her in her fifteenth year to marry an insane captain, who ultimately committed suicide. In 1827, Lord Blessington compelled his only legitimate daughter at the same immature ago, to marry Count D'Orsay. "There is not a word extant to show that Lady Blessington objected to the match, and gave any heed to the feelings of her stop-daughter." The Count gained .840,000, but a separation between the ill- matched pair took place three years afterwards. Madly in lore, it has been observed, with a woman whom he could not marry, he committed the fatal error of marrying a woman whom he could not love. The Countess of Guiceioli has said that Lady Blessing- ton did not visit Byron more than five or six times during her stay at Genoa. It may be so, and yet there may have been frequent intercourse, as she states, in their rides on horseback. Certainly the larger portion of the conversations agree singularly with what we know of Byron's character from other sources. We may add that the contemporary sketch of Lady Blessington by her sister is to be found also in Madden's Life of the Countess, published nearly forty years ago.
The most recent issues of the " Border Edition of the Waverley Novels" (Nimmo) consist of The Pirate and The Fortunes of Nigel, two nov le singularly illustrative of Scott's genius, and yet utterly unlike in character. Mr. Andrew Lang has the rare gift of adding something to the attraction of these fine romances by his fresh and judicious comments, which are too brief to weary the idlest reader. Among the etchings of The Pirate," Mordaunt rescuing Cleveland," drawn by Samuel Bough," The S word-Dance," by Lockhart Bogle, and "Minna taking the Pistol," etched by H. Macbeth-Raeburn from a painting by W. E. Lockhart, are the best perhaps ; but all the illustrations to this novel are worthy of praise. To The Fortunes of Nigel, a tale which gives as much scope to the artist as any one of the series, fair justice has been done. Nino admirable etchings are wholly the work of Mr. Macbeth, who also etches the "'Prentice Fight," painted by Mr. John Pattie.
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