crimes so grave they could not even be mentioned gave the gossips their
cue.

The press took it up, and the poet was warned by his friends not to appear
at the theater or upon the street for fear of the indignation of the mob.
The spoilt child of London was paying the penalty of popularity. The
pendulum had swung too far and was now coming back.

Byron, hunted by creditors, hooted by enemies, broken in health, crushed
in spirit, left the country--left England, never to return alive.

When Byron trod the deck of the good ship bound for Ostend, and saw a
strip of tossing, blue water separating him from England, his spirits
rose. He was twenty-eight years old, and the thought that he would yet do
something and be somebody was strong in his heart. All the old pride came
back.

The idea that he would not sell the product of his brain for hire was
abandoned, and soon after arriving in Holland he began to write letters
home, making sharp bargains with publishers.

Further than this, his attorneys, on his order, made demand for a share of
his wife's estate. And erelong we find Byron, the wasteful, cultivating
the good old gentlemanly habit of penuriousness. He was making money, and
had he lived to be sixty it is probable he would have evolved into a
conservative and written a book on "Getting on in the World, or Success as
I Have Found It."

Byron's pilgrimage down through Germany, along the Rhine to Switzerland,
was one of rest and recreation. At Berne, Basle, Lausanne and Geneva he