It was a strange passion of Byron to exaggerate his own faults and to misrepresent his better qualities. He seems to have been possessed with the belief that the world was bent on abusing him, and in a sort of madness he helped on the abuse. And this he did not merely by a reckless life, braving public opinion, but by painting characters in which his own identity was sure to be recognized, and yet distorted and enlarged so as to make a hero of crime or of wretchedness, or of both united.

In Manfred, this character painting upon himself attains its highest and grandest development:-Manfred the solitary, despising yet pitying mankind, with an intense love of the beautiful, and that love uniting him to one being in guilt and sadness, and ending in some mysterious crime, and a misery like the misery of the damned; Manfred attaining to high mysterious and unlawful knowledge and power, calling upon the fierce spirits of the elements, walking among the dizzy cliffs of the Jungfrau, gazing at the Staubbach upon the mild beauty of the Witch of the Alps, and then on the very summit of the Jungfrau mingling with the Destinies, Nemesis and Arimanes, and all in pursuit of forgetfulness and annihilation; and failing in these, calling up the dead to ask forgiveness, to inquire after her fate, to know if they are to meet in another state, at least to hear once more her voice; and then at last dying himself, triumphing over the spirits of hell, and departing into the unknown world to be his own torturer, his own hell. It is grand and terrible, second only, perhaps, to Milton's picture of the "Archangel ruined," but more sad and affecting. Manfred is alive to the beauty of nature, has a

quick sense of his own sins and wrongs, and condemns himself, in utter despair, under the consciousness of irremediable crime.

He is a lofty nature crushed by the weight of guilt. He suffers extreme agony, but is calm and majestic in suffering. In the language of the good Abbot:

Hath all the energy which should have made

A goodly frame of glorious elements,

Had they been wisely mingled; as it is,

It is an awful chaos-light and darkness

And mind and dust-and passions and pure thoughts
Mix'd and contending without end or order,

All dormant and destructive."

Was this a picture of Byron himself in his exaggerated imagination of himself? But there is one thing in which there is no exaggeration, and that is the dark skepticism which haunted his soul. In Manfred is the restless spirit of the poet himself believing in immortality, half believing in retribution, confident of that retribution at least which is self-inflicted—

"The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts"—

With moral sensibilities for a better creed, and yet held in the torturing grasp of doubt. "At times there is something mournful and depressing in his skepticism; but oftener it is of a high and solemn character, approaching to the very verge

168

THE POWER OF THE POET.

of a confiding faith. Whatever the poet may believe, we, his readers, always feel ourselves too much ennobled and elevated, even by his melancholy, not to be confirmed in our own belief by the very doubts so majestically conceived and uttered. His skepticism, if it ever approaches to a creed, carries with it its refutation in its grandeur."*

Wonderful is the power of the poet when even the scenes of the Jungfrau receive a new interest from his words! But the poem grew in his mind in the midst of this scenery. The internal mood found its apt representations in the forms without. The mind, too, has its ice-peaks, its avalanches, and its boiling mist, "like the foam of the ocean of hell.”

*Prof. Wilson.

XII.

The Oberland Continued.

next morning the mist rolled up the mountains and dissolved in air, the sun shone out bright, and the Alps had that apparent proximity which indicates a clear atmosphere and settled weather.

We accordingly took an early start for the Grindelwald. Unspunnen lay in the shadow of the mountains, silent and melancholy as ever. We entered the valley of the Lütschine. Here the aspect of every thing was changed. The river and the mountain torrents had expended some of their fury. Most of these torrents, where they cross the line of the road are bridged. There was one which the day before we had been compelled to ford with some apparent danger, for the carriage was swept down several feet, and the horses staggered. To-day it was a harmless babbler. The remaining mist

170 MORNING — MOUNTAIN TORRENTS.

curled lightly up the mountain sides, like an offering of incense which the mountains were paying to the serene and smiling heavens. The tops of the precipices were visible, and their dark faces were softened by the cheerful light of the morning. The tufts of foliage were bright and fresh, and glistened with the exhaling rain-drops. The cascades hung against the steep precipices every where like threads of light. The birds were singing out their joy to the returning sunshine. And the majestic Jungfrau in her virgin whiteness rose right before us, rearing her head into the heavens, like innocence conversing with God. Nor only the Jungfrau, but peak after peak burst upon our sight. It was a scene of glory and beauty, such as mine eye had never beheld before. It seemed as if we were entering an enchanted land, or as if the doors of paradise itself were opening to us.

We reached the junction of the Black and White Lütschine, and turning to the left, crossed a stone bridge, and entered the valley of Grindelwald. The Lütschine was at our right, deep in the valley, while the road wound along a ledge of the mountain. The precipices rose on both sides to an amazing height-several thousand feet, from whence the streams were descending in every imaginable form: sometimes rushing through a gully, a roaring torrent; sometimes falling from ledge to ledge a succession of waterfalls; and sometimes falling sheer several hundred feet, and then meeting a slope of the mountain, and curling down its side to the bottom. On our right, above these precipices, peered the snow-peaks, except when we descended too far under the shadow of the mountains. There were meadows below, and pasturages above us scattered over with chalets.