the general admiration, and keenly enjoyed so melodious an expression of a general state of feeling, without asking too pertinaciously for higher views and deeper meanings.  Old Quakers were troubled at detecting hidden copies and secret studies of Byron among young men and maidens who were to be preserved from all stimulants to the passions; and they were yet more troubled, when, looking to see what the charm was which so wrought upon the youth of their sect, they found themselves carried away by it, beyond all power to forget what they had read.  The idolatry of the poet, which marked that time, was an inevitable consequence of the singular aptness of his utterance.  His dress, manners, and likings were adopted, so far as they could be ascertained, by hundreds of thousands of youths who were at once sated with life and ambitious of fame, or at least of a reputation for fastidious discontent; young ladies declared that Byron was everything that was great and good; and even our best literature of criticism shows how respectful and admiring the hardest reviewers grew, after the poet had become the pet and the idol of all England.  At such a time, how should “Bell” Milbanke resist the intoxication,—­even before the poet addressed himself particularly to her?  A great reader in the quietness of her home, where all her tastes were indulged,—­a lover of poetry, and so genial and sympathizing as to be always sure to be filled with the spirit of her time,—­how could she fail to idolize Byron as others did?  And what must have been her exaltation, when he told her that the welfare of his whole life depended upon her!  Between her exaltation, her love, her sympathy, and her admiration, she might well make allowance for his eccentricities first, and for worse afterwards.  Thus, probably, it was that she got over the shock of that wedding-drive, and was again the bright, affectionate, trusting and winning woman whom he had described before and was to describe again to his skeptical friend Moore.

Before six weeks were over, he wrote to Moore (after some previous hankerings) that he should go abroad soon, “and alone, too.”  He did not go then.  In April the death of Lord Wentworth occurred, causing Sir Ralph and Lady Milbanke to take the name of Noel, according to Lord Wentworth’s will, and assuring the prospect of ultimate accession of wealth.  Meantime, the new expenses of his married life, entered upon without any extrication from old debts, caused such embarrassment, that, after many other humiliations had been undergone, he offered his books for sale.  As Lady Byron maintained a lifelong silence about the sufferings of her married life, little is known of that miserable year beyond what all the world saw:  executions in the house; increasing gloom and recklessness in the husband; a bright patience and resoluteness in the wife; and an immense pity felt by the poet’s adorers for his trials by a persecuting Fate.  During the summer and autumn, his mention of his wife to his