the same time,—­I should like to make a party,—­like people electrified in a row, by (or rather through) the same chain, holding one another’s hands, and all feeling the shock at once.  I have not yet apprised him of this.  He makes such a serious matter of all these things, and is so ‘melancholy and gentlemanlike,’ that it is quite overcoming to us choice spirits.

     “They say one shouldn’t be married in a black coat.  I won’t have a
     blue one,—­that’s flat.  I hate it.

     “Yours,” &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 206.  TO MR. COWELL.

     “October 22. 1814.

     “My dear Cowell,

“Many and sincere thanks for your kind letter—­the bet, or rather forfeit, was one hundred to Hawke, and fifty to Hay (nothing to Kelly), for a guinea received from each of the two former.[50] I shall feel much obliged by your setting me right if I am incorrect in this statement in any way, and have reasons for wishing you to recollect as much as possible of what passed, and state it to Hodgson.  My reason is this:  some time ago Mr. * * * required a bet of me which I never made, and of course refused to pay, and have heard no more of it; to prevent similar mistakes is my object in wishing you to remember well what passed, and to put Hodgson in possession of your memory on the subject.

     “I hope to see you soon in my way through Cambridge.  Remember me to
     H., and believe me ever and truly,” &c.

[Footnote 50:  He had agreed to forfeit these sums to the persons mentioned, should he ever marry.]

* * * * *

Soon after the date of this letter, Lord Byron had to pay a visit to Cambridge for the purpose of voting for Mr. Clarke, who had been started by Trinity College as one of the candidates for Sir Busick Harwood’s Professorship.  On this occasion, a circumstance occurred which could not but be gratifying to him.  As he was delivering in his vote to the Vice-Chancellor, in the Senate House, the under-graduates in the gallery ventured to testify their admiration of him by a general murmur of applause and stamping of the feet.  For this breach of order, the gallery was immediately cleared by order of the Vice-Chancellor.

At the beginning of the month of December, being called up to town by business, I had opportunities, from being a good deal in my noble friend’s society, of observing the state of his mind and feelings, under the prospect of the important change he was now about to undergo; and it was with pain I found that those sanguine hopes[51] with which I had sometimes looked forward to the happy influence of marriage, in winning him over to the brighter and better side of life, were, by a view of all the circumstances of his present destiny, considerably diminished; while, at the same time, not a few doubts and misgivings, which had never before so strongly occurred to me, with regard to his own fitness, under any circumstances, for the matrimonial tie, filled me altogether with a degree of foreboding anxiety as to his fate, which the unfortunate events that followed but too fully justified.