His true sentiments at this time are well portrayed in his letters, and especially in those addressed to his mother from Athens, when she consulted him on the conduct to be observed toward one of his tenants, a young farmer, who had behaved ill to a girl. "My opinion is," answered he, "that Mr. B---- ought to marry Miss K----. _Our first duty is not to do evil_ (but, alas! that is not possible); our second duty _is to remedy it, if that be in our power_. The girl is his equal. If she were inferior to him, a sum of money and an allowance for the child might be something,--although, after all, a miserable compensation; but, under the circumstances, he ought to marry her. I will not have _gay seducers_ on my estate, nor grant my farmers a privilege _I would not take myself of seducing other people's daughters_. I expect, then, this Lothario to follow my example, and begin by restoring the girl to society, or, by my father's beard, he shall hear of me." To this letter Moore justly adds:--"The reader must not pass lightly over this letter, for there is a _vigor of moral sentiment_ in it, expressed in such a plain, sincere manner, that it shows how full of health his heart was at bottom, even though it might have been scorched by passion." Lord Byron returned to his own country, after having spent two years travelling in Spain, Portugal, and the East, in the study and contemplation requisite for maturing his genius. His distaste for all material objects of love or passion, and, in general, for sensual pleasures, was then remarked by all those who knew him intimately. "An anchorite," says Moore, "who knew Lord Byron about this time, could not have desired for himself greater _indifference toward all the attractions of the senses_, than Lord Byron showed at the age of twenty-three." And as on arriving in London he met with a complication of sorrows, he could, without any great effort, remain on his guard against all seductions. He did so in reality; and Dallas assures us that, even when "Childe Harold" appeared, he still professed positive distaste for the society of women. Whether this disposition arose from regret at the death of one he had loved, or was caused by the light conduct of other women, it is certain that he did not seek their society then; nay, even avoided them. "I have a favor to ask you," he wrote, during this sad time, to one of his young friends: "never speak to me in your letters of a woman; make no allusion to the sex. I do not even wish to read a word about the feminine gender." And to this same friend he wrote in verse:---- "If thou would'st hold Place in a heart that ne'er was cold, By all the powers that men revere, By all unto thy bosom dear, Thy joys below, thy hopes above, Speak--speak of any thing but love." _Newstead Abbey, October 11, 1811._