Lady Byron Vindicated
rue Story of Lady Byron's Life' has been on
any abusive articles that both here and in England have followed that disclosure. Friends have undertaken the task for
ty of speaking to any purpose. Now, when all would seem to have spoken who can speak, and, it is to be hoped, have said t
ave I made this d
y, Because I considered
y stood forth in the eyes of the civilised world charged with
g to its climax over her grave. I claim, and shall prove, that it was not I who stirred up this controversy in this year 1869. I shall show who did d
the day would come that I should be subjected to so cruel an anguish as this use of them has been to me. Never did I suppose that,-when those kind hands, that had shed nothing but blessings, were lying in the helplessness of death, when that
state of exhausted health, when no labour of the kind was safe for me,-when my
ry efforts? I ask any man with a heart in his bosom, if he had been obliged to tell a story so cruel, because his mother's grave gave no rest from slander,-I ask any woman wh
last prayers of mothers,-are any words wrung like drops of
such pride in my countrymen, as men with whom, above all others, the cause of woman was safe and sacred, that I was at first astonished and incredulous at what I heard of the course of the American press, and was silent, not merely from the impossibility of being heard, but from grief and shame. But ref
man the foundation on which all things rest? Have you not, every individual of you, who must hereafter give an account yourself alone to God, an interest to know the exact
to a Christian public as interesting from the very fact that it was the avowed production of Lord Byron's mistress. No efficient protest was made against this outrage in E
gland, whom death is every day reducing. They were few in number compared with the great world, and were silent. I saw these foul slanders crystallising into history uncontradicted by friends who knew her personally, who, firm in their own knowledge of her virtues and limited in view as aristocratic circles generally are, had no idea of the width of the world they were living in, and the exigency of the crisis. When time passed on and no voice was raised, I spoke. I