energies of his character: as he, himself, describes his mode of living,
it was "To-day in a palace, to-morrow in a cow-house--this day with the
Pacha, the next with a shepherd." Thus were his powers of observation
quickened, and the impressions on his imagination multiplied. Thus
schooled, too, in some of the roughnesses and privations of life, and,
so far, made acquainted with the flavour of adversity, he learned to
enlarge, more than is common in his high station, the circle of his
sympathies, and became inured to that manly and vigorous cast of thought
which is so impressed on all his writings. Nor must we forget, among
these strengthening and animating effects of travel, the ennobling
excitement of danger, which he more than once experienced,--having been
placed in situations, both on land and sea, well calculated to call
forth that pleasurable sense of energy, which perils, calmly confronted,
never fail to inspire.

The strong interest which--in spite of his assumed philosophy on this
subject in Childe Harold--he took in every thing connected with a life
of warfare, found frequent opportunities of gratification, not only on
board the English ships of war in which he sailed, but in his occasional
intercourse with the soldiers of the country. At Salora, a solitary
place on the Gulf of Arta, he once passed two or three days, lodged in a
small miserable barrack. Here, he lived the whole time, familiarly,
among the soldiers; and a picture of the singular scene which their
evenings presented--of those wild, half-bandit warriors, seated round
the young poet, and examining with savage admiration his fine Manton
gun[3] and English sword--might be contrasted, but too touchingly, with
another and a later picture of the same poet, dying, as a chieftain, on
the same land, with Suliotes for his guards, and all Greece for his
mourners.