"Adieu, dear Mont Blanc, or rather 'Mont Rouge'; don't, for Heaven's
sake, turn Volcanic, at least roll the Lava of your indignation in any
other Channel, and not consume Your's ever,

"BYRON.

"_Write Immediately_."


Byron lived to modify these opinions, as is shown by the following
passages from his 'Detached Thoughts':


"If I were to live over again, I do not know what I would change in my
life, unless it were 'for--not to have lived at all'. All history and
experience, and the rest, teaches us that the good and evil are pretty
equally balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be
desired is an easy passage out of it. What can it give us but years?
and those have little of good but their ending.

"Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me that there can be
little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind; it is
in perpetual activity. I used to doubt of it, but reflection has
taught me better. It acts also so very independent of body--in dreams,
for instance;--incoherently and 'madly', I grant you, but still it is
mind, and much more mind than when we are awake. Now that this should
not act 'separately', as well as jointly, who can pronounce? The
stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, call the present state 'a soul
which drags a carcass,'--a heavy chain, to be sure; but all chains