means literary, nor ever was; therefore, the strongest feeling with which Lord Byron was regarded there, was a political one. Though an aristocrat in birth and bearing, he was a very thorough radical in principle. Hence, he had only the sympathy of the radicals with him, those consisting chiefly of the working classes. The whigs of the town and the gentry of the county, chiefly tories, regarded him only in a political light, and paid him not the respect of their presence. The religious world had a high prejudice against him for his manifold sins of speech, opinion, and life; they of course were not there. No party had so much more admiration of genius--conception of the lofty, intellectual achievements of the noble poet, discernment of the abundant qualifying, and, in fact, overbalancing grace and beauty, and even religious sentiment, which breathed through many of his writings--for no man had more ennobling and truly religious feelings rooted in his soul by the contemplation of the magnificence of God’s handiworks in creation; or felt occasionally, more deeply the spiritualizing influence that pervades nature;--no party had so much more of this tone of mind, than of their political or sectarian bias, as to forget all those minor things in his wonderful talent--his early death--his redeeming qualities, and last deeds--and the honour he had conferred, as an everlasting heritage, on this country. In the evening, after the people who had attended the funeral were dispersed, I went down to the church and entered the vault. There was a reporter from one of the London newspapers copying the inscriptions on the coffins by the light of a lamp; and a great hobble-de-hoy of a farmer’s lad was kneeling on the case that contained the poet’s heart, and lolling on the coffin with his elbows, as he watched the reporter, in a manner that indicated the most perfect absence of all thought of the place where he was, or the person on whose remains he was perched. In the churchyard, a group of the villagers were eagerly discussing the particulars of the funeral, and the character of the deceased. One man attempted to account for the apparently indifferent manner in which the clergyman performed the burial service, by his having understood that he felt himself disgraced by having to bury an atheist. “An atheist!” exclaimed an old woman, “tell me that he was an atheist! D’ ye think an atheist would be beloved by his servants as this man was? Why, they fret themselves almost to death about him. And d’ ye think they would have made so much of him in foreign parts? Why, they almost worshipped him as a god in Grecia!” giving the final _a_ a sound almost as long as one’s finger. This was conclusive--the wondering auditors had nothing to reply--they quietly withdrew their several ways, and I mine.