That, with so many drawbacks upon all generous effusions of sentiment, he should still have preserved so much of his native tenderness and ardour as is conspicuous, through all disguises, in his unquestionable love for Madame Guiccioli, and in the still more undoubted zeal with which he now entered, heart and soul, into the great cause of human freedom, wheresoever or by whomsoever asserted[18],—­only shows how rich must have been the original stores of sensibility and enthusiasm which even a career such as his could so little chill or exhaust.  Most consoling, too, is it to reflect that the few latter years of his life should have been thus visited with a return of that poetic lustre, which, though it never had ceased to surround the bard, had but too much faded away from the character of the man; and that while Love,—­reprehensible as it was, but still Love,—­had the credit of rescuing him from the only errors that disgraced his maturer years, for Liberty was reserved the proud but mournful triumph of calling the last stage of his glorious course her own, and lighting him, amidst the sympathies of the world, to his grave.

Having endeavoured, in this comparison between his present and former self, to account, by what I consider to be their true causes, for the new phenomena which his character, at this period, exhibited, I shall now lay before the reader the Journal by which these remarks were more immediately suggested, and from which I fear they will be thought to have too long detained him.

[Footnote 15:  “In quest’ epoca venne a Ravenna di ritorno da Roma e Napoli il mio diletto fratello Pietro.  Egli era stato prevenuto da dei nemeci di Lord Byron contro il di lui carattere; molto lo affligeva la mia intimita con lui, e le mie lettere non avevano riuscito a bene distruggere la cattiva impressione ricevuta dei detrattori di Lord Byron.  Ma appena lo vidde e lo conobbe egli pure ricevesse quella impressione che non puo essere prodotta da dei pregi esteriori, ma solamente dall unione di tuttocio che vi e di piu bello e di piu grande nel cuore e nella mente dell uomo.  Svani ogni sua anteriore prevenzione contro di Lord Byron, e la conformita della loro idee e dei studii loro contribui a stringerli in quella amicizia che non doveva avere fine che colla loro vita.”]

[Footnote 16:  A draft of this Address, in his own handwriting, was found among his papers.  He is supposed to have intrusted it to a professed agent of the Constitutional Government of Naples, who had waited upon him secretly at Ravenna, and, under the pretence of having been waylaid and robbed, induced his Lordship to supply him with money for his return.  This man turned out afterwards to have been a spy, and the above paper, if confided to him, fell most probably into the hands of the Pontifical Government.]