No European magazine has ever had the weight and circulation in America that the ‘Blackwood’ has held.  In the days of my youth, when New England was a comparatively secluded section of the earth, the wit and genius of the ‘Noctes Ambrosianae’ were in the mouths of men and maidens, even in our most quiet mountain-towns.  There, years ago, we saw all Lady Byron’s private affairs discussed, and felt the weight of Christopher North’s decisions against her.  Shelton Mackenzie, in his American edition, speaks of the American circulation of ‘Blackwood’ being greater than that in England. {126} It was and is now reprinted monthly; and, besides that, ‘Littell’s Magazine’ reproduces all its striking articles, and they come with the weight of long established position.  From the very fact that it has long been considered the Tory organ, and the supporter of aristocratic orders, all its admissions against the character of individuals in the privileged classes have a double force.

When ‘Blackwood,’ therefore, boldly denounces a lady of high rank as a modern Brinvilliers, and no sensation is produced, and no remonstrance follows, what can people in the New World suppose, but that Lady Byron’s character was a point entirely given up; that her depravity was so well established and so fully conceded, that nothing was to be said, and that even the defenders of aristocracy were forced to admit it?

I have been blamed for speaking on this subject without consulting Lady Byron’s friends, trustees, and family.  More than ten years had elapsed since I had had any intercourse with England, and I knew none of them.  How was I to know that any of them were living?  I was astonished to learn, for the first time, by the solicitors’ letters, that there were trustees, who held in their hands all Lady Byron’s carefully prepared proofs and documents, by which this falsehood might immediately have been refuted.

If they had spoken, they might have saved all this confusion.  Even if bound by restrictions for a certain period of time, they still might have called on a Christian public to frown down such a cruel and indecent attack on the character of a noble lady who had been a benefactress to so many in England.  They might have stated that the means of wholly refuting the slanders of the ‘Blackwood’ were in their hands, and only delayed in coming forth from regard to the feelings of some in this generation.  Then might they not have announced her Life and Letters, that the public might have the same opportunity as themselves for knowing and judging Lady Byron by her own writings?

Had this been done, I had been most happy to have remained silent.  I have been astonished that any one should have supposed this speaking on my part to be anything less than it is,—­the severest act of self-sacrifice that one friend can perform for another, and the most solemn and difficult tribute to justice that a human being can be called upon to render.