XV111 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



our own times furnish, perhaps, a more remark- 

 able instance in Lord Byron. Unlike theirs, 

 his soul had not been soothed into wisdom and 

 nourished into power in the silence of retire- 

 ment, and by the beam of the academic lamp, 

 but had been hurried through the agitating 

 splendours of rank and fashion, the intoxication 

 of unexampled popularity, the fascinations of 

 love and beauty; but he had made acquaintance 

 with Nature in her solitude and sublimity in 

 his boyhood; and with what ardent sighs did 

 he long after her ! — with what contempt did he 

 turn from all other allurements, and pour into 

 her bosom the burning language of his devo- 

 tion ! He may be said to have been her pil- 

 grim into all lands in which she displays the 

 sovereignty of her beauty and grandeur. 



All heaven and earth are still — though not in sleep, 

 But breathless as we grow when feeling most ; 

 And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep : — 

 All heaven and earth are still : from the high host 

 Of stars to the lulled lake and mountain coast, 

 All is concentred in a life intense, 

 Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, 

 But hath a part of being, and a sense 

 Of that which is of all Creator and defence. 



Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt 

 In solitude, when we are least alone,' 

 A truth which through our being then doth melt 

 Vnd purifies from self ; it is a tone, 



