in the heart of man which sophistries of his own or of other beings
may make him forget, deny, blaspheme; but which exists eternally, and
will assert itself. If this be not the meaning of "Manfred,"
especially of that great scene in the chamois hunter's cottage, what
is?--If this be not the meaning of "Cain," and his awful awakening
after the murder, not to any mere dread of external punishment, but
to an overwhelming, instinctive, inarticulate sense of having done
wrong, what is?

Yes; that law exists, let it never be forgotten, is the real meaning
of Byron, down to that last terrible "Don Juan," in which he sits
himself down, in artificial calm, to trace the gradual rotting and
degradation of a man without law, the slave of his own pleasures; a
picture happily never finished, because he who painted it was taken
away before he had learnt, perhaps when he was beginning to turn back
from--the lower depth within the lowest deep.

Now to this whole form of consciousness, poor Shelley's mind is
altogether antipodal. His whole life through was a denial of
external law, and a substitution in its place of internal sentiment.
Byron's cry is: There is a law, and therefore I am miserable. Why
cannot I keep the law? Shelley's is: There is a law, and therefore
I am miserable. Why should not the law be abolished?--Away with it,
for it interferes with my sentiments--Away with marriage, "custom and
faith, the foulest birth of time."--We do not wish to follow him down
into the fearful sins which he defended with the small powers of
reasoning--and they were peculiarly small--which he possessed. Let
any one who wishes to satisfy himself of the real difference between
Byron's mind and Shelley's, compare the writings in which each of
them treats the same subject--namely, that frightful question about