It is singular, and marks the change which has taken place in our moral notions. Formerly poets gave to their personages one only vice or passion, taking care in other respects to render them virtuous, in order that they should be worthy of interest; at the present day, our poets give their personages I know not how many passions and vices, with one only virtue as a counterpoise. And this virtue, weak and solitary, is by no means charged with the task of purifying the corrupted mind in which it has by chance been preserved. It carefully respects the independence of those vices which permit it to dwell with them. Neither is it commissioned to inspire an interest in the spectator; because it is vice which now inspires all our interest, thanks to a certain noble and proud bearing which has been assigned to it, and which has been imitated from the heroes of Lord Byron. M. Girardin, it will have been remarked from the above extract, is disposed to reproach our Lord Byron as the source from which some of his countrymen have drawn their dark inspiration. This may be true. But without defending our Byron from charges to which he is manifestly exposed, let us say thus much for him, that in his poetry he was still too much a classic not to be a worshipper of the beautiful; that he did not court for itself the monstrous, the ugly; his mind did not willingly associate with what was revolting in outward form or human passion. If there was any thing Satanic, as some were pleased to express it, in his poetry, he was not, at all events, of the hobgoblin or demoniac school. It was the Satan of Milton, with its ruined beauty and clouded dignity, that had taken possession of his imagination. He delighted to depict the pride, the love, the generosity, of hearts at war with man, and not on too good terms with heaven; but still it was their pride, their love, their generosity, that occupied his imagination. They are bad men; he takes care to tell us so himself; but he has not the heart to make them act otherwise than as noble fellows while they are under his guidance. The Corsair, from his very name and profession, is a declared criminal; but this once said, the poet occupies himself and his reader with nothing but what is generous and heroic in Conrad. Byron had no disposition, had a certain antipathy, to paint the virtuous man; but it was a virtue, nevertheless, that attracted his pencil. He felt it necessary, as a preliminary condition, to remove his hero from the category of good men; but this being fairly done, he resigned himself to the natural bent for what is good and great. A Borgia, whether male or female, in all its native deformity, was not the subject to allure him.