doom seems to have been far too deep and serious to need the aid of any such accessory.  Having expressed a wish, on relanding, to visit his own palace, which he had left to the care of Mr. Barry during his absence, and from which Madame Guiccioli had early that morning departed, he now proceeded thither, accompanied by Count Gamba alone.  “His conversation,” says this gentleman, “was somewhat melancholy on our way to Albaro:  he spoke much of his past life, and of the uncertainty of the future.  ‘Where,’ said he, ’shall we be in a year?’—­It looked (adds his friend) like a melancholy foreboding; for, on the same day, of the same month, in the next year, he was carried to the tomb of his ancestors.”

It took nearly the whole of the day to repair the damages of their vessel; and the greater part of this interval was passed by Lord Byron, in company with Mr. Barry, at some gardens near the city.  Here his conversation, as this gentleman informs me, took the same gloomy turn.  That he had not fixed to go to England, in preference, seemed one of his deep regrets; and so hopeless were the views he expressed of the whole enterprise before him, that, as it appeared to Mr. Barry, nothing but a devoted sense of duty and honour could have determined him to persist in it.

In the evening of that day they set sail;—­and now, fairly launched in the cause, and disengaged, as it were, from his former state of existence, the natural power of his spirit to shake off pressure, whether from within or without, began instantly to display itself.  According to the report of one of his fellow-voyagers, though so clouded while on shore, no sooner did he find himself, once more, bounding over the waters, than all the light and life of his better nature shone forth.  In the breeze that now bore him towards his beloved Greece, the voice of his youth seemed again to speak.  Before the titles of hero, of benefactor, to which he now aspired, that of poet, however pre-eminent, faded into nothing.  His love of freedom, his generosity, his thirst for the new and adventurous,—­all were re-awakened; and even the bodings that still lingered at the bottom of his heart but made the course before him more precious from his consciousness of its brevity, and from the high and self-ennobling resolution he had now taken to turn what yet remained of it gloriously to account.

  “Parte, e porta un desio d’eterna ed alma
  Gloria che a nobil cuor e sferza e sprone;
  A magnanime imprese intenta ha l’alma,
  Ed insolite cose oprar dispone. 
  Gir fra i nemici—­ivi o cipresso o palma
  Acquistar.”

After a passage of five days, they reached Leghorn, at which place it was thought necessary to touch, for the purpose of taking on board a supply of gunpowder, and other English goods, not to be had elsewhere.