"What a great crime death has committed! It is something like the disappearance of a star, or the extinction of a planet, with all the creation it supposed. When great minds have accomplished their task, like Shakspeare, Dante, Goethe, their departure from the scene of the world leaves in the soul the sublime melancholy which presides over the setting of the sun, after it has poured out all its rays. But when we hear of the death of a Raphael, of a Mozart, and especially of Byron, struck down in their flight, just at the time when they were extending their course, we can not refrain from calling these an eternal cause for mourning, irreparable losses, and inconsolable regrets! A genius who dies prematurely carries treasures away with him! How many ideal existences were linked with his own! What sublime thoughts vanish from his brow! What great and charming characters die with him, even before they are born! How many truths postponed, at least, for humanity!" And we will add: to how many great and noble actions his death has put an end! Such regrets do honor as much to those who experience them as to those who give them rise. But it is not to the enthusiasm created by his genius, nor to the grief evinced by the Greek nation, for whom he died, that we will turn for a last proof of the goodness of his nature. Such regrets might almost be called interested,--emanating, as they do, from the knowledge of the loss of a treasure. Of the tears of the heart, which were shed for the man without his genius, shall we ask that last proof. These are the words by which Count Gamba describes his affliction:-- "In vain should I attempt to describe the deep, the distressing sorrow that overwhelmed us all. I will not speak of myself, but of those who loved him less, because they had seen him less. Not only Mavrocordato and his immediate circle, but the whole city and all its inhabitants were, as it seemed, stunned by the blow--it had been so sudden, so unexpected. His illness, indeed, had been known; and for the three last days, none of us could walk in the streets, without anxious inquiries from every one who met us, of 'How is my lord?' We did not mourn the loss of the great genius,--no, nor that of the supporter of Greece--our first tears were for our father, our patron, our friend. He died in a strange land, and among strangers: but more loved, more sincerely wept, he could never have been, wherever he had breathed his last. "Such was the attachment, mingled with a sort of reverence and enthusiasm, with which he inspired those around him, that there was not one of us who would not, for his sake, have willingly encountered any danger in the world. The Greeks of every class and every age, from Mavrocordato to the meanest citizen, sympathized with our sorrows. It was in vain that, when we met, we tried to keep up our spirits--our attempts at consolation always ended in mutual tears."