Their revenge was mutual-minded. Misunderstood, calumniated, they quitted the land which was not worthy of them. Genius-borne, they both passed to the east; and to them we owe the most sensible,--the most passioned,--the most voluptuous,--and the most inspired pictures of "the land of the citron and myrtle," that have ever waked the wish and melted the heart of us southron readers. A mysterious divorcement from the marital partner marked the absence--the long last absence--of each! Mind-banished,--person-expatriated,--they vented upon their country that revenge of which injured genius can alone be capable. And looking at the calumnies upon the one, and the female animosities towards the other,--regarding the banishment of mental beauty and magic power in both,--we cannot better convey to our readers the revenge which genius gave, and must ever give, than by making a common cause of the two, and explaining it in the inimitable lines of the one. "And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now I shrink from what is suffered; let him speak Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak But in this page a record will I seek. Not in the air shall these my words disperse, Tho' I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak The deep prophetic fullness of this verse, And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse. That curse shall be _forgiveness_!"-- This is indeed the inspiration of forgiveness. We feel an awe after reading this humane and lofty imprecation, which calls for a pause. There is the same feeling upon us from which we cannot escape, as that to which we are subject when we wander under the arched roof and sculptured aisles,--in the breathing, breathless, cathedral silence,--in the awful stone repose,--in the contemplation of "The uplifted palms, the silent marble lips!" The similarity between the genius of Byron and that of Lady Mary, and their fates,--except as to the death and duration of life of the two, (the one dying at the age of thirty-seven, and the other at the age of seventy-three,--a sad and strange reverse figures!)--are singularly interesting and affecting. The one,--sexually to distinguish them,--was _Rousseau_ with a heart,--the other _De Staël_ with one.--But we grow serious, critical, and minute. We are not certain that we are not growing anatomical. We shall therefore enter upon our _conversazione_ with our charming, high-born, easy caftan,--Minerva,--Lady Mary Wortley Montagu! We pass silently over her biography, and at once commence with the unmarried _Lady Mary Pierrepont_ and the married Montagu! What can be livelier than the following York picture. It is _Hogarthian_!--and let it not be forgotten that the lady was only twenty, and unwedded.