Colonel Stanhope, whom the sad intelligence reached at Salona, thus writes to the Committee:--"A courier has just arrived from the Chief Scalza. Alas! all our fears are realised. The soul of Byron has taken its last flight. England has lost her brightest genius, Greece her noblest friend. To console them for the loss, he has left behind the emanations of his splendid mind. If Byron had faults, he had redeeming virtues too--he sacrificed his comfort, fortune, health, and life, to the cause of an oppressed nation. Honoured be his memory!" Mr. Trelawney, who was on his way to Missolonghi at the time, describes as follows the manner in which he first heard of his friend's death:--"With all my anxiety I could not get here before the third day. It was the second, after having crossed the first great torrent, that I met some soldiers from Missolonghi. I had let them all pass me, ere I had resolution enough to enquire the news from Missolonghi. I then rode back, and demanded of a straggler the news. I heard nothing more than--Lord Byron is dead,--and I proceeded on in gloomy silence." The writer adds, after detailing the particulars of the poet's illness and death, "Your pardon, Stanhope, that I have thus turned aside from the great cause in which I am embarked. But this is no private grief. The world has lost its greatest man; I my best friend." Among his servants the same feeling of sincere grief prevailed:--"I have in my possession (says Mr. Hoppner, in the Notices with which he has favoured me,) a letter written by his gondolier Tita, who had accompanied him from Venice, giving an account to his parents of his master's decease. Of this event the poor fellow speaks in the most affecting manner, telling them that in Lord Byron he had lost a father rather than a master; and expatiating upon the indulgence with which he had always treated his domestics, and the care he expressed for their comfort and welfare." His valet Fletcher, too, in a letter to Mr. Murray, announcing the event, says, "Please to excuse all defects, for I scarcely know what I either say or do; for, after twenty years' service with my Lord, he was more to me than a father, and I am too much distressed to give now a correct account of every particular." In speaking of the effect produced on the friends of Greece by this event, Mr. Trelawney says,--"I think Byron's name was the great means of getting the Loan. A Mr. Marshall, with 8000_l_. per annum, was as far as Corfu, and turned back on hearing of Lord Byron's death. Thousands of people were flocking here: some had arrived as far as Corfu, and hearing of his death, confessed they came out to devote their fortunes not to the Greeks, or from interest in the cause, but to the noble poet; and the 'Pilgrim of Eternity[1]' having departed, they turned back."[2] [Footnote 1: The title given by Shelley to Lord Byron in his Elegy on the death of Keats.