stone; I remembered it well, for I lowered the coffin of the Countess of Lovelace into this vault, and laid her by her father's side." And when presently we went into a little vestry he produced the Register of Burials and displayed the record of that interment, in the following words: "1852. Died at 69 Cumberland Place, London. Buried December 3. Aged thirty-six.--Curtis Jackson." The Byrons were a short-lived race. The poet himself had just turned thirty-six; his mother was only forty-six when she passed away. This name of Curtis Jackson in the register was that of the rector or curate then incumbent but now departed. The register is a long narrow book made of parchment and full of various crabbéd handwritings,--a record similar to those which are so carefully treasured at the church of the Holy Trinity at Stratford; but it is more dilapidated. Another relic shown by John Brown was a bit of embroidery, presenting the arms of the Byron family. It had been used at Byron's funeral, and thereafter was long kept in the church, though latterly with but little care. When the Rev. Curtis Jackson came there he beheld this frail memorial with pious disapprobation. "He told me," said the sexton, "to take it home and burn it. I did take it home, but I didn't burn it; and when the new rector came he heard of it and asked me to bring it back, and a lady gave the frame to put it in." Framed it is, and likely now to be always preserved in this interesting church; and earnestly do I wish that I could remember, in order that I might speak it with honour, the name of the clergyman who could thus rebuke bigotry, and welcome and treasure in his church that shred of silk which once rested on the coffin of Byron. Still another relic preserved by John Brown is a large piece of cardboard bearing the inscription which is upon the coffin of the poet's mother, and which bore some part in the obsequies of that singular woman,--a creature full of faults, but the parent of a mighty genius, and capable of inspiring deep love. On the night after Byron arrived at Newstead, whither he repaired from London, on receiving news of her illness, only to find her dead, he was found sitting in the dark and sobbing beside the corse. "I had but one friend in the world," he said, "and she is gone." He was soon to publish _Childe Harold_, and to gain hosts of friends and have the world at his feet; but he spoke what he felt, and he spoke the truth, in that dark room on that desolate night. Thoughts of these things, and of many other strange passages and incidents in his brief, checkered, glorious, lamentable life, thronged into my mind as I stood there, in presence of those relics and so near his dust, while the church grew dark and the silence seemed to deepen in the dusk of the gathering night. [Illustration: _Hucknall-Torkard Church--Interior._]