May I also ask whether the packet of autograph letters in the possession of your correspondent was ever shown to Southey, and whether an intention was not entertained by him, at one period, of writing a memoir of Wolfe? If these letters were unknown to Southey, I have strong reasons for believing that another collection of General Wolfe's letters exists. Would not your correspondent's collection or a selection from it, form a very interesting publication? J. H. M. STANZAS IN CHILDE HAROLD. (Vol. iv., pp. 223. 285.) I am much obliged to your correspondents who have taken the trouble to answer my Query respecting the lines in _Childe Harold_; but I am sorry that you did not print one of the replies "at considerable length" to which you allude in your note to MR. CROSSLEY'S brief one: for MR. CROSSLEY'S settlement of the question will hardly, I think, appear so satisfactory to all readers as it evidently does to him. Will you allow me to explain the reasons for thinking so? In his opinion it is quite transparent that Lord Byron meant to say, speaking to the Ocean of its shores: "Thy waters wasted them when they were free, And many a tyrant since" (has wasted them). But in my former letter I quoted a German translator's version of the lines, and he did not understand them thus; and I have just referred to a French translator's, and he also differs from MR. CROSSLEY. In fact, his view of the matter so completely tallies with mine, that I will, with your permission, quote his words: "Tes rivages sont des empires, où tout est changé, excepté toi. Que sont devenus l'Assyrie, la Grèce, Rome, Carthage? Tes flots battaient leurs frontières aux jours de la liberté, comme depuis sous le règne de plus d'un tyran." This passage is taken from the complete translation of Lord Byron's Works, published at Paris in 1836, by M. Benjamin de Laroche, vol. i. p. 754. M. de Laroche was no doubt led to form his opinion of the real meaning of these two lines from a careful consideration of those which immediately precede and immediately follow. The theme of the poet is the proud superiority of the ocean to human authority, and its insensibility to human vicissitude. He rebukes the haughty assumption that "Britannia rules the waves;" he refers in proof to the striking fact, that of the two most memorable tempests recorded in the naval history of Spain and England, the one aided our triumph, and the other tore the fruits of a triumph from us. "The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the proud title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war, These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar."