“Do not defend me—­it will never do—­you will only make yourself enemies.

“Mine are neither to be diminished nor softened, but they may be overthrown; and there are events which may occur, less improbable than those which have happened in our time, that may reverse the present state of things—­nous verrons.

“I send you this gossip that you may laugh at it, which is all it is good for, if it is even good for so much.  I shall be delighted to see you again; but it will be melancholy, should it be only for a moment.

“Ever yours, N. B.”

It being now decided that Lord Byron should proceed forthwith to Greece, all the necessary preparations for his departure were hastened.  One of his first steps was to write to Mr. Trelawney, who was then at Rome, to request that he would accompany him.  “You must have heard,” he says, “that I am going to Greece—­why do you not come to me?  I can do nothing without you, and am exceedingly anxious to see you.  Pray, come, for I am at last determined to go to Greece:—­it is the only place I was ever contented in.  I am serious; and did not write before, as I might have given you a journey for nothing.  They all say I can be of use to Greece; I do not know how—­nor do they; but, at all events, let us go.”

A physician, acquainted with surgery, being considered a necessary part of his suite, he requested of his own medical attendant at Genoa, Dr. Alexander, to provide him with such a person; and, on the recommendation of this gentleman, Dr. Bruno, a young man who had just left the university with considerable reputation, was engaged.  Among other preparations for his expedition, he ordered three splendid helmets to be made,—­with his never forgotten crest engraved upon them,—­for himself and the two friends who were to accompany him.  In this little circumstance, which in England (where the ridiculous is so much better understood than the heroic) excited some sneers at the time, we have one of the many instances that occur amusingly through his life, to confirm the quaint but, as applied to him, true observation, that “the child is father to the man;”—­the characteristics of these two periods of life being in him so anomalously transposed, that while the passions and ripened views of the man developed themselves in his boyhood, so the easily pleased fancies and vanities of the boy were for ever breaking out among the most serious moments of his manhood.  The same schoolboy whom we found, at the beginning of the first volume, boasting of his intention to raise, at some future time, a troop of horse in black armour, to be called Byron’s Blacks, was now seen trying on with delight his fine crested helmet, and anticipating the deeds of glory he was to achieve under its plumes.