LB

thought the question set at rest in the History of the Decline and Fall,' but I am not so easily convinced. It is not a matter of volition to unbelieve. Who likes to own that he has been a fool all his life, to unlearn all that he has been taught in his youth? or can think that some of the best men that ever lived have been fools? I have often wished I had been born a Catholic. That purgatory of theirs is a comfortable doctrine; I wonder the reformers gave it up, or did not substitute something as consolatory in its room. It is an improvement on the transmigration, Shelley, which all your wiseacre philoso-, phers taught.

se

is

f

"You believe in Plato's three principles; why not id in the Trinity? One is not more mystical than the other. I don't know why I am considered an enemy to religion, and an unbeliever. I disowned the other day that I was of Shelley's school in metaphysics, though I admired his poetry; not but what he has changed his mode of thinking very much since he wrote the Notes to 'Queen Mab,' which I was accused of having a hand in. I know, however, that I am considered an infidel. My wife and sister, when they joined parties, sent me prayer-books. There was a Mr. Mulock, who went about the Continent preaching orthodoxy in politics and religion, a writer of bad sonnets, and a lecturer in worse prose,--he tried to convert me to some new sect of Christianity. Hẹ was a great anti-materialist, and abused Locke.

On another occasion he said;

"I am always getting new correspondents. Here are three letters just arrived, from strangers all of them. One is from a French woman, who has been writing to me off and on for the last three years. She is not only a blue-bottle, but a poetess, I suspect. Her object in addressing me now, she says, is to get me to write on the loss of a slave-ship, the particulars of which she details.

"The second epistle is short, and in a hand I know very well: it is anonymous, too. Hear what she says: I cannot longer exist without acknowledging the tupultuous and agonizing delight with which my soul urns at the glowing beauties of yours.'

"A third is of a very different character from the last; it is from a Mr. Sheppard, inclosing a prayer made for my welfare by his wife a few days before her death. The letter states that he has had the misfortune to lose this amiable woman, who had seen me at Ramsgate, many years ago, rambling among the cliffs; that she had been impressed with a sense of my irreligion from the tenor of my works, and had often prayed fervently for my conversion, particularly in her last moments. The prayer is beautifully written. I like devotion in women. She must have been a divine creature. I pity the man who has lost her! I shall write to him by return of the courier, to condole with him, and tell him that Mrs. S need not have entertained any concern for my spiritual affairs, for that uo man is more of a Christian than I am, what

ever my writings may have led her and others to suspect."

JANUARY.

"A circumstance took place in Greece that impressed itself lastingly on my memory. I had once thought of founding a tale on it; but the subject is too harrowing for any nerves-too terrible for any pen! An order was issued at Zanina by its sanguinary Rajah, that any Turkish woman convicted of incontinence with a Christian should be stoned to death! Love is slow at calculating dangers, and defies tyrants and their edicts; and many were the victims to the savage barbarity of this of Ali's. Among others, a girl of sixteen, of a beauty such as that country only produces, fell under the vigilant eye of the police. She was suspected, and not without reason, of carrying. on a secret intrigue with a Neapolitan of some rank, whose long stay in the city could be attributed to no other cause than this attachment. Her crime (if crime it be to love as they loved) was too fully proved; they were torn from each other's arms, never to meet again and yet both might have escaped-she by abjuring her religion, or he by adopting hers. They resolutely refused to become apostates to their faith. Ali Pacha was never known to pardon. She was stoned by those dæmons, although in the fourth month of her pregnancy! He was sent to a town where the plague was raging, and died, happy in not having long outlived the object of his affections!

"One of the principal incidents in 'The Giaour is derived from a real occurrence, and one too in which I myself was nearly and deeply interested; but an unwillingness to have it considered a traveller's tale made me suppress the fact of its genuineness. The Marquis of Sligo, who knew the particulars of the story, reminded me of them in England, and wondered I had not authenticated them in the Preface:

"When I was at Athens, there was an edict in force similar to that of Ali's, except that the mode of punishment was different. It was necessary, therefore, that all love-affairs should be carried on with the greatest privacy. I was very fond at that time of a Turkish girl,-ay, fond of her as I have been of few women. All went on very well till the Ramazan for forty days, which is rather a long fast for lovers: all intercourse between the sexes is forbidden by law, as well as by religion. During this Lent of the Musselmans, the women are not allowed to quit their apartments. I was in despair, and could hardly contrive to get a cinder, or a token-flower sent to express it. We had not met for several days, and all my thoughts were occupied in planning an assignation, when, as ill fate would have it, the means I took to effect it led to the discovery of our secret. The penalty was death,-death without reprieve, a horrible death, at which one cannot think without shuddering! An order was issued for the law being put into immediatę effect. In the mean time I knew nothing of what had happened, and it was determined that I should be kept in ignorance of the whole affair till it was too late to interfere. A mere accident only enabled me to prevent the completion of the sentence. I was taking

one of my usual evening rides by the sea-side, when I observed a crowd of people moving down to the shore, and the arms of the soldiers glittering among them. They were not so far off, but that I thought I could now and then distinguish a faint and stifled shriek. My curiosity was forcibly excited, and I dispatched one of my followers to inquire the cause of the procession. What was my horror to learn that they were carrying an unfortunate girl, sewn up in a sack, to be thrown into the sea! I did not hesitate as to what was to be done. I knew I could depend on my faithful Albanians, and rode up to the officer commanding the party, threatening, in case of his refusal to give up his prisoner, that I would adopt means to compell him. He did not like the business he was on, or perhaps the determined look of my body-guard, and consented to accompany me back to the city with the girl, whom I soon discovered to be my Turkish favourite. Suffice it to say, that my interference with the chief magistrate, backed by a heavy bribe, saved her; but it was only on condition that I should break off all intercourse with her, and that she should immediately quit Athens, and be sent to her friends in Thebes. There she died, a few days after her arri val, of a fever—perhaps of love."

"The severest fever I ever had was at Patras. I had left Fletcher at Constantinople-convalescent, but unable to move from weakness, and had no attendants but my Albanians, to whom I owe my life.

"They were devotedly attached to me, and watch