for the new canto (_C. H_., iv.). I won't take it. I ask 2500 guineas for it, which you will either give or not, as you think proper." During the remaining years of his life he grew more and more exact, driving hard bargains for his houses, horses, and boats, and fitting himself, had he lived, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the newly-liberated State, from which he took a bond securing a fair interest for his loan. He made out an account in _£. s. d_. against the ungrateful Dallas, and when Leigh Hunt threatened to sponge upon him he got a harsh reception; but there is nothing to countenance the view that Byron was ever really possessed by the "good old gentlemanly vice" of which lie wrote. The Skimpoles and Chadbands of the world are always inclined to talk of filthy lucre: it is equally a fashion of really lavish people to boast that they are good men of business. We have only a few glimpses of Byron's progress. At Brussels the Napoleonic coach was set aside for a more serviceable caleche. During his stay in the Belgian capital lie paid a visit to the scene of Waterloo, wrote the famous stanzas beginning, "Stop, for thy tread is on an empire's dust!" and in unpatriotic prose, recorded his impressions of a plain which appeared to him to "want little but a better cause" to make it vie in interest with those of Platea and Marathon. The rest of his journey lay up the Rhine to Basle, thence to Berne, Lausanne, and Geneva, where he settled for a time at the Hôtel Secheron, on the western shore of the lake. Here began the most interesting literary relationship of his life, for here he first came in contact with the impassioned Ariel of English verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley. They lived in proximity after they left the hotel, Shelley's headquarters being at Mont Alégre, and Byron's for the remainder of the summer at the Villa Diodati; and their acquaintance rapidly ripened into an intimacy which, with some interruptions, extended over the six remaining years of their joint lives. The place for an estimate of their mutual influence belongs to the time of their Italian partnership. Meanwhile, we hear of them mainly as fellow-excursionists about the lake, which on one occasion departing from its placid poetical character, all but swallowed them both, along with Hobhouse, off Meillerie. "The boat," says Byron, "was nearly wrecked near the very spot where St. Preux and Julia were in danger of being drowned. It would have been classical to have been lost there, but not agreeable. I ran no risk, being so near the rocks and a good swimmer; but our party wore wet and incommoded." The only anxiety of Shelley, who could not swim, was, that no one else should risk a life for his. Two such revolutionary or such brave poets were, in all probability, never before nor since in a storm in a boat together. During this period Byron complains of being still persecuted. "I was in a wretched state of health and worse spirits