His habits of life, while at Pisa, had but very little differed, except in the new line of society into which his introduction to Shelley's friends led him,--from the usual monotonous routine in which, so singularly for one of his desultory disposition, the daily course of his existence had now, for some years, flowed. At two he usually breakfasted, and at three, or, as the year advanced, four o'clock, those persons who were in the habit of accompanying him in his rides, called upon him. After, occasionally, a game of billiards, he proceeded,--and, in order to avoid starers, in his carriage,--as far as the gates of the town, where his horses met him. At first the route he chose for these rides was in the direction of the Cascine and of the pine-forest that reaches towards the sea; but having found a spot more convenient for his pistol exercise on the road leading from the Porta alla Spiaggia to the east of the city, he took daily this course during the remainder of his stay. When arrived at the Podere or farm, in the garden of which they were allowed to erect their target, his friends and he dismounted, and, after devoting about half an hour to a trial of skill at the pistol, returned, a little before sunset, into the city. "Lord Byron," says a friend who was sometimes present at their practising, "was the best marksman. Shelley, and Williams, and Trelawney, often made as good shots as he--but they were not so certain; and he, though his hand trembled violently, never missed, for he calculated on this vibration, and depended entirely on his eye. Once after demolishing his mark, he set up a slender cane, whose colour, nearly the same as the gravel in which it was fixed, might well have deceived him, and at twenty paces he divided it with his bullet. His joy at a good shot, and his vexation at a failure, was great--and when we met him on his return, his cold salutation, or joyous laugh, told the tale of the day's success." For the first time since his arrival in Italy, he now found himself tempted to give dinner parties; his guests being, besides Count Gamba and Shelley, Mr. Williams, Captain Medwin, Mr. Taafe, and Mr. Trelawney;--and "never," as his friend Shelley used to say, "did he display himself to more advantage than on these occasions; being at once polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good humour; never diverging into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening." About midnight his guests generally left him, with the exception of Captain Medwin, who used to remain, as I understand, talking and drinking with his noble host till far into the morning; and to the careless, half mystifying confidences of these nocturnal sittings, implicitly listened to and confusedly recollected, we owe the volume with which Captain Medwin, soon after the death of the noble poet, favoured the world.