Was it no offence to the house of Wentworth to attack the pure character of its late venerable head, and to brand her in her sacred grave with the name of one of the vilest of criminals?

Might there not properly have been an indignant protest of family solicitors against this insult to the person and character of the Baroness Wentworth?

If virtue went for nothing, benevolence for nothing, a long life of service to humanity for nothing, one would at least have thought, that, in aristocratic countries, rank might have had its rights to decent consideration, and its guardians to rebuke the violation of those rights.

We Americans understand little of the advantages of rank; but we did understand that it secured certain decorums to people, both while living and when in their graves.  From Lady Byron’s whole history, in life and in death, it would appear that we were mistaken.

What a life was hers!  Was ever a woman more evidently desirous of the delicate and secluded privileges of womanhood, of the sacredness of individual privacy?  Was ever a woman so rudely dragged forth, and exposed to the hardened, vulgar, and unfeeling gaze of mere curiosity?—­her maiden secrets of love thrown open to be handled by roues; the sanctities of her marriage-chamber desecrated by leering satyrs; her parents and best friends traduced and slandered, till one indignant public protest was extorted from her, as by the rack,—­a protest which seems yet to quiver in every word with the indignation of outraged womanly delicacy!

Then followed coarse blame and coarser comment,—­blame for speaking at all, and blame for not speaking more.  One manly voice, raised for her in honourable protest, was silenced and overborne by the universal roar of ridicule and reprobation; and henceforth what refuge?  Only this remained:  ’Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him as to a faithful Creator.’

Lady Byron turned to this refuge in silence, and filled up her life with a noble record of charities and humanities.  So pure was she, so childlike, so artless, so loving, that those who knew her best, feel, to this day, that a memorial of her is like the relic of a saint.  And could not all this preserve her grave from insult?  O England, England!

I speak in sorrow of heart to those who must have known, loved, and revered Lady Byron, and ask them, Of what were you thinking when you allowed a paper of so established literary rank as the ‘Blackwood,’ to present and earnestly recommend to our New World such a compendium of lies as the Guiccioli book?

Is the great English-speaking community, whose waves toss from Maine to California, and whose literature is yet to come back in a thousand voices to you, a thing to be so despised?

If, as the solicitors of the Wentworth family observe, you might be entitled to treat with silent contempt the slanders of a mistress against a wife, was it safe to treat with equal contempt the indorsement and recommendation of those slanders by one of your oldest and most powerful literary authorities?