Twenty-five years ago it was announced, in an Edinburgh Journal, by Sir Walter Scott: “That mighty genius, which walked among men as something superior to ordinary mortality, and whose powers were beheld with wonder, and something approaching to terror, as if we knew not whether they were of good or of evil, is laid as soundly to rest as the poor peasant, whose ideas never went beyond his daily task. The voice of just blame, and that of malignant censure, are at once silenced; and we feel almost as if the great luminary of heaven had suddenly disappeared from the sky, at the very moment when every telescope was leveled for the examination of the spots which dimmed its brightness.” Thus did the great “Wizard of the North” open his beautiful tribute to the memory of the Noble Enchanter of the South, within whose fascinated circle had been drawn the beauty, fashion, genius and literature of England. It was as if the light of one star answered to that of another, or as if the music of the one responded to the dying strains of the other—each in his exalted sphere, when the “Great Unknown” thus uttered his voluntary eulogy on a kindred genius, not to say imperial rival, of the first magnitude, if the magnanimous spirit of the former could so conceive of any cotemporary. The first fervor of admiring enthusiasm of the genius of Byron having been cooled by the lapse of time, we are enabled to form a more judicious estimate of it, and of the treasures it poured forth with such lavish profusion. It is not now the image of the young lord we see in the brilliant saloon, surrounded by gay admirers, with a face of classic beauty, expressive eyes, an exquisite mouth and chin, hands aristocratically small and delicately white, while over his head strayed those luxuriant, dark-brown curls, that seem to constitute the mystery of finishing beauty about the immortal brow of man and womankind, and quite to defy the art of the sculptor. It is not such an one we see—a living, moving form, like our own; but we think of the ghastly image of death, we revert to the form mouldering in its subterranean bed, relapsing into as common dust as that of the poorest beggar. But the MIND remains—that which has stamped its burning thoughts on the poetic page; it survives, imperishable, in another, an etherial sphere. It has sought congenial companionship in one of the two states of perpetual being, as inevitably demonstrated by reason as taught by revelation. Byron himself might scorn to aspire after celestial purity and glory, but he could draw with a dark and flagrant pencil the terrors of remorse and retribution. He believed in the future existence of the soul, whatever words of ominous meaning might at times be inserted to complete a line or to indulge a whim of fancy. “Of the immortality of the soul,” said he, “it appears to me there can be but little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind; it is in perpetual activity. I used