["But here (at Gloucester) is a _modernity_, which beats all antiquities for curiosity. Just by the high altar is a small pew hung with green damask, with curtains of the same; a small corner-cupboard, painted, carved, and gilt, for books, in one corner, and two troughs of a bird-cage, with seeds and water. If any mayoress on earth was small enough to inclose herself in this tabernacle, or abstemious enough to feed on rape and canary, I should have sworn that it was the shrine of the queen of the aldermen. It belongs to a Mrs. Cotton, who, having lost a favourite daughter, is convinced her soul is transmigrated into a robin redbreast, for which reason she passes her life in making an aviary of the cathedral of Gloucester."--Letter to Richard Bentley, September, 1753 (_Lord Orford's Works_, 1798, v. 279).] [192] {210} [According to J. B. Le Chevalier (_Voyage de La Propontide, etc._, an. viii. (1800), p. 17), the Turkish name for a small bay which formed the ancient port of Sestos, is _Ak-Bachi-Liman_ (Port de la Tête blanche).] [hj] _And in its stead that mourning flower_ _Hath flourished--flourisheth this hour,_ _Alone and coldly pure and pale_ _As the young cheek that saddens to the tale_. _And withers not, though branch and leaf_ _Are stamped with an eternal grief_.--[MS.] An earlier version of the final text reads-- _As weeping Childhood's cheek at Sorrow's tale!_ [193] ["_The Bride_, such as it is is my first _entire_ composition of any length (except the Satire, and be damned to it), for _The Giaour_ is but a string of passages, and _Childe Harold_ is, and I rather think always will be, unconcluded" (Letter to Murray, November 29, 1813). It (the _Bride_) "was published on Thursday the second of December; but how it is liked or disliked, I know not. Whether it succeeds or not is no fault of the public, against whom I can have no complaint. But I am much more indebted to the tale than I can ever be to the most partial reader; as it wrung my thoughts from reality to imagination--from selfish regrets to vivid recollections--and recalled me to a country replete with the _brightest_ and _darkest_, but always most _lively_ colours of my memory" (_Journal_, December 5, 1813, _Letters_, 1898, ii. 291, 361).] THE CORSAIR: A TALE. ----"I suoi pensieri in lui dormir non ponno." Tasso, _Gerusalemme Liberata_, Canto X. [stanza lxxviii. line 8]. INTRODUCTION TO _THE CORSAIR_.