sa belle figure, disparut tout-a-coup pour faire a l’expression du bonheur.  Le premier chant de la Mascheroniana, que Monti recita presque en entier, vaincu par les acclamations des auditeurs, causa la plus vive sensation a l’auteur de Childe Harold.  Je n’oublierai jamais l’expression divine de ses traits; c’etait l’air serein de la puissance et du genie, et suivant moi, Lord Byron n’avait, en ce moment, aucune affectation a se reprocher.”]

* * * * *

LETTER 251.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Verona, November 6. 1816.

     “My dear Moore,

“Your letter, written before my departure from England, and addressed to me in London, only reached me recently.  Since that period, I have been over a portion of that part of Europe which I had not already seen.  About a month since, I crossed the Alps from Switzerland to Milan, which I left a few days ago, and am thus far on my way to Venice, where I shall probably winter.  Yesterday I was on the shores of the Benacus, with his fluctibus et fremitu.  Catullus’s Sirmium has still its name and site, and is remembered for his sake:  but the very heavy autumnal rains and mists prevented our quitting our route, (that is, Hobhouse and myself, who are at present voyaging together,) as it was better not to see it at all than to a great disadvantage.

“I found on the Benacus the same tradition of a city, still visible in calm weather below the waters, which you have preserved of Lough Neagh, ‘When the clear, cold eve’s declining.’  I do not know that it is authorised by records; but they tell you such a story, and say that the city was swallowed up by an earthquake.  We moved to-day over the frontier to Verona, by a road suspected of thieves,—­’the wise convey it call,’—­but without molestation.  I shall remain here a day or two to gape at the usual marvels,—­amphitheatre, paintings, and all that time-tax of travel,—­though Catullus, Claudian, and Shakspeare have done more for Verona than it ever did for itself.  They still pretend to show, I believe, the ’tomb of all the Capulets’—­we shall see.

“Among many things at Milan, one pleased me particularly, viz. the correspondence (in the prettiest love-letters in the world) of Lucretia Borgia with Cardinal Bembo, (who, you say, made a very good cardinal,) and a lock of her hair, and some Spanish verses of hers,—­the lock very fair and beautiful.  I took one single hair of it as a relic, and wished sorely to get a copy of one or two of the letters; but it is prohibited:  that I don’t mind; but it was impracticable; and so I only got some of them by heart.  They are kept in the Ambrosian Library, which I often visited to look them over—­to the scandal of the librarian, who wanted to enlighten me with sundry valuable MSS., classical, philosophical, and pious.  But I stick to the Pope’s