“When the funeral service was over, we left the bier in the middle of the church, where it remained until the evening of the next day, and was guarded by a detachment of his own brigade.  The church was crowded without cessation by those who came to honour and to regret the benefactor of Greece.  In the evening of the 23d, the bier was privately carried back by his officers to his own house.  The coffin was not closed till the 29th of the month.  Immediately after his death, his countenance had an air of calmness, mingled with a severity, that seemed gradually to soften; for when I took a last look of him, the expression, at least to my eyes, was truly sublime.”

We have seen how decidedly, while in Italy, Lord Byron expressed his repugnance to the idea of his remains resting upon English ground; and the injunctions he so frequently gave to Mr. Hoppner on this point show his wishes to have been,—­at least, during that period,—­sincere.  With one so changing, however, in his impulses, it was not too much to take for granted that the far more cordial feeling entertained by him towards his countrymen at Cephalonia would have been followed by a correspondent change in this antipathy to England as a last resting-place.  It is, at all events, fortunate that by no such spleen of the moment has his native country been deprived of her natural right to enshrine within her own bosom one of the noblest of her dead, and to atone for any wrong she may have inflicted upon him, while living, by making his tomb a place of pilgrimage for her sons through all ages.

By Colonel Stanhope and others it was suggested that, as a tribute to the land he celebrated and died for, his remains should be deposited at Athens, in the Temple of Theseus; and the Chief Odysseus despatched an express to Missolonghi to enforce this wish.  On the part of the town, too, in which he breathed his last, a similar request had been made by the citizens; and it was thought advisable so far to accede to their desires as to leave with them, for interment, one of the vessels, in which his remains, after embalmment, were enclosed.

The first step taken, before any decision as to its ultimate disposal, was to have the body conveyed to Zante; and every facility having been afforded by the Resident, Sir Frederick Stoven, in providing and sending transports to Missolonghi for that purpose, on the morning of the 2d of May the remains were embarked, under a mournful salute from the guns of the fortress:—­“How different,” says Count Gamba, “from that which had welcomed the arrival of Byron only four months ago!”

At Zante, the determination was taken to send the body to England; and the brig Florida, which had just arrived there with the first instalment of the Loan, was engaged for the purpose.  Mr. Blaquiere, under whose care this first portion of the Loan had come, was also the bearer of a Commission for the due management of its disposal in Greece, in which Lord Byron was named as the principal Commissioner.  The same ship, however, that brought this honourable mark of confidence was to return with him a corpse.  To Colonel Stanhope, who was then at Zante, on his way homeward, was intrusted the charge of his illustrious colleague’s remains; and on the 25th of May he embarked with them on board the Florida for England.