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saved the future. And he did this not for one country or another, but for all Europe. What France owed and owes him she can never repay. He lifted her from the dust. Italy's debt to him is, if possible, a greater one. But why should one specialise? Civilisation must refuse to forget the honour due to the man who, at the crisis of life and death, imperiously declared for life, and struggle, and the claim of victory. Shelley at this crisis did nothing—could do nothing. He had no readers, no public. Byron was an English lord, an English aristocrat, and the start this gave him in the race was then enormous. Europe, lying under the feet of English Toryism and the Holy Alliance, suddenly saw an English noble strike blow after blow at its oppressors. Even Wellington, the sacred peace-monger of the world, was not safe. Byron bemocked his nose! The death of an English king was celebrated by an English Laureate in incredibly fulsome style, and no one dared open lips to ridicule or reject. History will yet have to tell us what it meant at such a moment as this to see that Laureate swept away in a fiery torrent of wit and mockery and scorn. Nothing can get over the fact that Byron, at the direst time of need, did the actual work—and a tremendous piece of work it was—which threw back the advancing tide of tyranny and kept our hope