advances into the valley of Newstead, and close
to a ring of trees that was long a landmark to
Nottinghamshire; then, taking a long last look
at Annesley, Byron spurred his horse homeward
like a madman. That ring of trees Jack
Musters afterwards cut down in a jealous pet
with his (as it was reported) ill-used wife.

Poor Mary Chaworth! her marriage was far
from happy. Her rough hard-riding husband,
the first gentleman huntsman of his day (famous
for his tremendous fight with Asheton Smith
when at Eton), was (Irving says) harsh and
neglectful. He seldom came to Annesley;
disliking the poetical immortality that Byron had
conferred on his wife, and lived at a house near
Nottingham. This was set on fire during a
Luddite riot; Mrs. Musters, a delicate woman,
escaping into the shrubbery on that cold wet
night, half naked. Her fragile constitution
never recovered this shock, and her mind
ultimately gave way.

The bitterness of that early disappointment
Byron never forgot. Long after his unhappy
marriage, he wrote:

"My M. A. C., alas! Why do I say my?
Our union would have healed feuds in which
blood had been shed by our fathers; it would
have joined lands broad and rich; it would have
joined at least one heart, and two persons not
ill matched in years; and—and—and—what
has been the result!"

BALLAD OPERA AND HOME TRAGEDY.

APOLAGIES being due for the protraction of
curiosity—such as naturally flowed in the tract
of my photographical revilations- subsiquently
the Delusive Bonnets of Arcadia—the enduriances
beneath a pictorious prig who naled his
collours to the mast of Piety's banner—and the cruel
crumbling into air of the Stratfordian bubble.
Gentle reader of the two sexes (the ladies first),
recollect that crushed souls revives slowly, be
healing's balm ever so prompt and surreptious.
In place of balsam, alas! bitters was alias my
lot.* To precede to an ulterior chapter of my
sad, lonely tale.
* See page 33 of vol. xiv., and page 138 of
vol. xv.

On the sitting of Hope's beams in Mr. Stratford's
entertainment, which would have
embarked me forth in communion with a choice
spirit and elivated me in the sociable scale,
Uncertainty presumed her sway. Whither next
promote extortion? was the note and query. To
be a model, even A. 1, would it longer suffice?
(considering the ware and tare of poetry and
passion expected by such as Mr. Bloxome, who
looks to have truth, and purity, and antic Christian
art divigated for them at a few shillings
a hour—as if they should not be able to circumvent
it out of their own heads). But a model,
when the party comes to be B. 2, is what no one,
as has had a past of glory (including favour among
the tender sex) can supersede to. That there
Disobedient Prophet had given me a sickener, and
others, younger, was arising from Ocean bright
(as the sweet opera duett in which flamed the orb
of day expresses the fact)—and I was sasiated
of stripping, and I was the piece of the Rose,
as had lived by the Clay, and had been a near
precocious prosperity—how, scattered to the
four winds by the dilapidation of my agreeable
friend and quoniam partner, Mr. Stratford, and
the machinations of that Mings I have narated.
Now could I, after them soaring confidences,
retrospect to past spheres?

The titters of Mrs. Molesey, on my disapintment
with Mr. Stratford, conspired to my decree:
assented in, as they was, by my partner, whose
fractious airs increased. Mrs. M. (that inefficious
cook) entitled a dish, and a precious lot of
cold potatoes was in it, "Timothy's entertaiment;"—
and when I retorted the Tubulbulated
Bridge at her, her tempers they grew truly horrid.
The two, to hear them, would never have
partaken of a ake or a pain had I not crossed their
path. "An idle, profligate coxcomb, willing to
live on bonnets, or anything beside as might
offer." Let me take my way, let them take theirs
unmolested, was the finale of our domestic triads.
I wished that it might be so; only molestation
and Mrs. Molesey was synoptious, and having
fixed her claws on my wife, let her alone again
she never would till the downfal of Popacy.
They was to retain the boy, who had been
articulated, I am confidant, to screech whenever he
set eyes on me (babies being as equal to hints
as adultious Christians), and I was to transmit
them eighteen shillings a week to their sepurate
home, a boarding-house at Maida-vale—which
they was to open under resplendient auspices.
I did ask, as we was sitting over dinner
concerting, was these from the Tubulbous Dividends
from the Bridge, and was emitted in answer a
spoonful of scalding hot rice-pudding splashed
in my entire visage (the marks is on my nose still),
and a catyract of language I will not impute to
pages animated by elegance and order. "Mrs.
M.," said I, "your name should be MINGS, not
Molesey, if Molesey it be. Mrs. Wignett,
though you have taken a sisterly rattlesnake to
your bosom, if sister she be, whatever so be her
private means and advances, I will act above-
board and graceful about the money for the
boy;—and I hopes never to break bread at the
same table with either of you women again,
save you can congeal your tempers as casual
females should."

How little did I ween of the oraculous truth
as was devolved in my adieu: with the two
women laughing, and the baby screaching itself
black in the face—I believe to this hour, prompted
by a pin. How could I presume of the cavarnous
secrets as lurked in that boarding-house
project? I should have known as such females
would not let a male go, on fugacious reasons—
alibi that they was a hiding and a huddling away
what was more than meant the ear:—but my temper
was exploded. "Tread on a simple worm,"
&c. &c., and my face was smarting under the
missel launched against it, the marks of which