'Strange as it may seem, Dr. Kennedy is most faithful where you doubt his being so. Not merely from casual expressions, but from the whole tenor of Lord Byron's feelings, I could not but conclude he was a believer in the inspiration of the Bible, and had the gloomiest Calvinistic tenets. To that unhappy view of the relation of the creature to the Creator, I have always ascribed the misery of his life.... It is enough for me to remember, that he who thinks his transgressions beyond _forgiveness_ (and such was his own deepest feeling) _has_ righteousness beyond that of the self-satisfied sinner; or, perhaps, of the half awakened. It was impossible for me to doubt, that, could he have been at once assured of pardon, his living faith in a moral duty and love of virtue ("I love the virtues which I cannot claim") would have conquered every temptation. Judge, then, how I must hate the Creed which made him see God as an Avenger, not a Father. My own impressions were just the reverse, but could have little weight, and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts for long from that _idée fixe_, with which he connected his physical peculiarity as a stamp. Instead of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt convinced that every blessing would be "turned into a curse" for him. Who, possessed of such ideas, could lead a life of love and service to God or man? They must in a measure realize themselves. "The worst of it is I _do_ believe," he said. I, like all connected with him, was broken against the rock of Predestination.' Lady Byron writes from her own personal experience of a time when tender affection or sympathy formed no part of Byron's nature; of a time when he had no regard for the interests or the happiness of others; when he lived according to his own humours, and when his will was his law. Byron's earlier poetry amply supports Lady Byron's view of so miserable a state of mind. But there is reason to hope--nay, we might say to believe--that, in the last years of his life, Byron began to realize that a merciful God would be wholly incapable of such manifest injustice as to condemn His creatures to suffer for crimes which they were powerless to resist and predestined to commit. He believed in God and in the immortality of the soul, and has publicly declared that all punishment which is to revenge, rather than to correct, must be morally wrong. 'Human passions,' wrote Byron, 'have probably disfigured the Divine doctrines here: but the whole thing is inscrutable.'