the chief of the republican party at Athens, and never again saw Byron alive.  The poet, after spending a month on board the “Hercules,” dismissed the vessel, and hired a house for Gamba and himself at Metaxata, a healthy village about four miles from the capital of the island.  Meanwhile, Blaquiere, neglecting his appointment at Zante, had gone to Corfu, and thence to England.  Colonel Napier being absent from Cephalonia, Byron had some pleasant social intercourse with his deputy, but, unable to get from him any authoritative information, was left without advice, to be besieged by letters and messages from the factions.  Among these there were brought to him hints that the Greeks wanted a king, and he is reported to have said, “If they make me the offer, I will perhaps not reject it.”

The position would doubtless have been acceptable to a man who never—­amid his many self-deceptions—­affected to deny that he was ambitious:  and who can say what might not have resulted for Greece, had the poet lived to add lustre to her crown?  In the meantime, while faring more frugally than a day-labourer, he yet surrounded himself with a show of royal state, had his servants armed with gilt helmets, and gathered around him a body-guard of Suliotes.  These wild mercenaries becoming turbulent, he was obliged to despatch them to Mesolonghi, then threatened with siege by the Turks and anxiously waiting relief.  During his residence at Cephalonia, Byron was gratified by the interest evinced in him by the English residents.  Among these the physician, Dr. Kennedy, a worthy Scotchman, who imagined himself to be a theologian with a genius for conversion, was conducting a series of religious meetings at Argostoli, when the poet expressed a wish to be present at one of them.  After listening, it is said, to a set of discourses that occupied the greater part of twelve hours, he seems, for one reason or another, to have felt called on to enter the lists, and found himself involved in the series of controversial dialogues afterwards published in a substantial book.  This volume, interesting in several respects, is one of the most charming examples of unconscious irony in the language, and it is matter of regret that our space does not admit of the abridgment of several of its pages.  They bear testimony, on the one hand, to Byron’s capability of patience, and frequent sweetness of temper under trial; on the other, to Kennedy’s utter want of humour, and to his courageous honesty.  The curiously confronted interlocutors, in the course of the missionary and subsequent private meetings, ran over most of the ground debated between opponents and apologists of the Calvinistic faith, which Kennedy upheld without stint.  The Conversations add little to what we already know of Byron’s religious opinions; nor is it easy to say where he ceases to be serious and begins to banter, or vice versa.  He evidently wished to show that in argument he was good at fence, and could handle a theologian