I asked, ‘Was there a child?’ I had been told by Mrs. ——­ that there was a daughter, who had lived some years.

She said there was one, a daughter, who made her friends much trouble, being of a very difficult nature to manage.  I had understood that at one time this daughter escaped from her friends to the Continent, and that Lady Byron assisted in efforts to recover her.  Of Lady Byron’s kindness both to Mrs. Leigh and the child, I had before heard from Mrs. ——­, who gave me my first information.

It is also strongly impressed on my mind, that Lady Byron, in answer to some question of mine as to whether there was ever any meeting between Lord Byron and his sister after he left England, answered, that she had insisted upon it, or made it a condition, that Mrs. Leigh should not go abroad to him.

When the conversation as to events was over, as I stood musing, I said, ‘Have you no evidence that he repented?’ and alluded to the mystery of his death, and the message be endeavoured to utter.

She answered quickly, and with great decision, that whatever might have been his meaning at that hour, she felt sure he had finally repented; and added with great earnestness, ’I do not believe that any child of the heavenly Father is ever left to eternal sin.’

I said that such a hope was most delightful to my feelings, but that I had always regarded the indulgence of it as a dangerous one.

Her look, voice, and manner, at that moment, are indelibly fixed in my mind.  She looked at me so sadly, so firmly, and said,—­

’Danger, Mrs. Stowe!  What danger can come from indulging that hope, like the danger that comes from not having it?’

I said in my turn, ‘What danger comes from not having it?’

‘The danger of losing all faith in God,’ she said, ’all hope for others, all strength to try and save them.  I once knew a lady,’ she added, ’who was in a state of scepticism and despair from belief in that doctrine.  I think I saved her by giving her my faith.’

I was silent; and she continued:  ’Lord Byron believed in eternal punishment fully:  for though he reasoned against Christianity as it is commonly received, he could not reason himself out of it; and I think it made him desperate.  He used to say, “The worst of it is I do believe.”  Had he seen God as I see him, I am sure his heart would have relented.’

She went on to say, that his sins, great as they were, admitted of much palliation and excuse; that he was the child of singular and ill-matched parents; that he had an organisation originally fine, but one capable equally of great good or great evil; that in his childhood he had only the worst and most fatal influences; that he grew up into manhood with no guide; that there was everything in the classical course of the schools to develop an unhealthy growth of passion, and no moral influence of any kind to restrain it; that the manners