"We were riding together in the Pineta on a beautiful Spring day. 'How,' said Byron, 'when we raise our eyes to heaven, or direct them to the earth, can we doubt of the existence of God? or how, turning them inwards, can we doubt that there is something within us, more noble and more durable than the clay of which we are formed? Those who do not hear, or are unwilling to listen to these feelings, must necessarily be of a vile nature.' I answered him with all those reasons which the superficial philosophy of Helvetius, his disciples and his masters, have taught. Byron replied with very strong arguments, and profound eloquence, and I perceived that obstinate contradiction on this subject, which forced him to reason upon it, gave him pain." Later, at Genoa, the subject came up again: "In various ways I heard him confirm the sentiments which I have already mentioned to you. "'Why, then,' said I to him, 'have you earned for yourself the name of impious, and enemy of all religious belief, from your writings?' He answered, 'They are not understood, and are wrongly interpreted by the malevolent. My object is only to combat hypocrisy, which I abhor in everything, and particularly in religion, and which now unfortunately appears to me to be prevalent, and for this alone do those to whom you allude wish to render me odious and make me out worse than I am.'" Decidedly we have a more serious Byron there--a child becoming a man, emerging from frivolity, and putting away frivolous and childish things; and one gets the same impression of mental and moral evolution repeated when one reads Byron's appreciation of Shelley, written under the shock of the news of his sudden death--passages which it is a labour of love to copy out: "I presume you have heard that Mr. Shelley and Captain Williams were lost on the 7th ultimo in their passage from Leghorn to Spezzia, in their own open boat. You may imagine the state of their families: I never saw such a scene, nor wish to see another. You were all brutally mistaken about Shelley, who was, without exception, the _best_ and least selfish man I ever knew. I never knew one who was not a beast in comparison." "There is thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice _now_, when he can be no better for it." "You are all mistaken about Shelley. You do not know how mild, how tolerant, how good he was in society; and as perfect a gentleman as ever crossed a drawing-room, when he liked, and where he liked."