but in the course of a few minutes the convulsion ceased, and he began to recover his senses:  his speech returned, and he soon rose, apparently well.  During the struggle his strength was preternaturally augmented, and when it was over, he behaved with his usual firmness.  “I conceive,” says Colonel Stanhope, “that this fit was occasioned by over-excitement.  The mind of Byron is like a volcano; it is full of fire, wrath, and combustibles, and when this matter comes to be strongly agitated, the explosion is dreadful.  With respect to the causes which produced the excess of feeling, they are beyond my reach, except one great cause, the provoking conduct of the Suliotes.”

A few days after this distressing incident, a new occurrence arose, which materially disturbed the tranquillity of Byron.  A Suliote, accompanied by the son, a little boy, of Marco Botzaris, with another man, walked into the Seraglio, a kind of citadel, which had been used as a barrack for the Suliotes, and out of which they had been ejected with difficulty, when it was required for the reception of stores and the establishment of a laboratory.  The sentinel ordered them back, but the Suliote advanced.  The sergeant of the guard, a German, pushed him back.  The Suliote struck the sergeant; they closed and struggled.  The Suliote drew his pistol; the German wrenched it from him, and emptied the pan.  At this moment a Swedish adventurer, Captain Sass, seeing the quarrel, ordered the Suliote to be taken to the guard-room.  The Suliote would have departed, but the German still held him.  The Swede drew his sabre; the Suliote his other pistol.  The Swede struck him with the flat of his sword; the Suliote unsheathed his ataghan, and nearly cut off the left arm of his antagonist, and then shot him through the head.  The other Suliotes would not deliver up their comrade, for he was celebrated among them for distinguished bravery.  The workmen in the laboratory refused to work:  they required to be sent home to England, declaring, they had come out to labour peaceably, and not to be exposed to assassination.  These untoward occurrences deeply vexed Byron, and there was no mind of sufficient energy with him to control the increasing disorders.  But, though convinced, as indeed he had been persuaded from the beginning in his own mind, that he could not render any assistance to the cause beyond mitigating the ferocious spirit in which the war was conducted, his pride and honour would not allow him to quit Greece.

In a letter written soon after his first attack, he says, “I am a good deal better, though of course weakly.  The leeches took too much blood from my temples the day after, and there was some difficulty in stopping it; but I have been up daily, and out in boats or on horseback.  To-day I have taken a warm bath, and live as temperately as can well be, without any liquid but water, and without any animal food”; then adverting to the turbulences of the