for October, 1869, p. 414). Through Mrs. Leigh passed many
communications between Byron and Lady Byron after the separation. To
her, Byron, in 1816 and 1817, wrote the two sets of "Stanzas to
Augusta," the "Epistle to Augusta," and the Journal of his journey
through the Alps, "which contains all the germs of 'Manfred' (letter to
Murray, August, 1817). She was in his thoughts on the Rhine, and in the
third canto of 'Childe Harold':--

"But one thing want these banks of Rhine,
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine."

To her he was writing a letter at Missolonghi (February 23, 1824), which
he did not live to finish, "My dearest Augusta, I received a few days
ago your and Lady Byron's report of Ada's health." He carried with him
everywhere the pocket Bible which she had given him. "I have a Bible,"
he told Dr. Kennedy ('Conversations'), "which my sister gave me, who is
an excellent woman, and I read it very often." His last articulate words
were "My sister--my child."

Several volumes of Mrs. Leigh's commonplace books are in existence,
filled with extracts mostly on religious topics. She was, wrote the late
Earl Stanhope, in a letter quoted in the 'Quarterly Review' (October,
1869, p. 421), "very fond" of talking about Byron.

"She was," he continues, "extremely unprepossessing in her person and
appearance--more like a nun than anything, and never can have had the
least pretension to beauty. I thought her shy and sensitive to a fault
in her mind and character."

Frances, Lady Shelley, who died in January, 1873, and was intimately