"Byron, your mother is a fool."

"I know it," was his sad reply.

When we think of this fatherless boy, with the blood of the Byrons in his veins, subjected to the fondness and violence of this foolish mother, we ought to wonder, not that he was so wild and ignoble a man, but that there was any good in him at all. There was much good in him. One of his school-fellows at Harrow was the great Sir Robert Peel, who used to relate an anecdote of Byron that does him much honor. A great bully was tormenting little Peel most cruelly one day, by inflicting blows with a stick upon the inside flesh of one of his arms, which the brute twisted round for the purpose. Byron chanced to see his little friend writhing under the torture, and was half convulsed with rage and pity. Unable to fight the tormentor, he came up to him, with tears rolling down his face, red with fury, and said in a low, humble tone:

"How many stripes do you mean to inflict?"

"Why, you little rascal," roared the bully, "what is that to you?"

"Because, if you please," said Byron, holding up his arm. "I will take half."

He was, like his mother, apt to be violent in all things, even in his attachment to other school-boys. We have one of his school letters, in which he reproaches one of his friends for beginning his last letter "My dear Byron," instead of "My dearest Byron." In the defence of his friends he was a very valiant champion. One of them being weak from a recent sickness, was ill fitted to fight his way in a great concourse of rough boys, and Byron said to him:

"Harness, if any one bullies you, tell me, and I'll thrash him if I can."

He kept his word, and the two boys remained fast friends for many years.

At college he was still a desultory student, an omniverous reader, an ardent friend, and a devotee of active sports. He became, through incessant practice, an excellent shot, an expert boatman, and one of the best swimmers in Europe, and, as he grew to manhood, he became exceedingly handsome. His col

sex.

lege friendships were more like the romantic passion of a youth for a lovely girl than an attachment between persons of the same At college, too, his old habit of writing verses grew upon him to such a degree that by the time he was eighteen he had enough poems in his desk for a volume. His youthful poetry was pleasing enough, and generally creditable to him, though the fire and audacity of his later productions do not appear in it. As a specimen, the following lines may be given, written when he was about seventeen, on discovering that a tree that he had planted was dying:

"Young Oak, when I planted thee deep in the ground,

I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine, –
That thy dark, waving branches would flourish around,
And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine.

"Such, such was my hope when, in infancy's years,

--

On the land of my fathers I reared thee with pride.
They are past, and I water thy stem with my tears,
Thy decay, not the weeds that surround thee can hide."

There was no harm in such mild verses as these, and there was some promise of better things.

On leaving college, he again resided with his mother, whose furious temper age had not subdued. In her paroxysms of anger, she would throw at him the poker and tongs, and not unfrequently he had to fly from the house before her. At the age of nineteen his first volume of verses appeared, entitled:

-

"Hours of Idleness. A Series of Poems, original and translated. By George Gordon-Lord Byron a minor. Newark, 1807."

In his long and egotistical preface, he said that this, his first publication, would also be his last, as it was not at all likely that a man of his rank and expectations would pursue literature any farther. The volume had some success, received some praise in the press, and all was going well with it, until the first day of the year 1808, when that number of the "Edinburgh Review" appeared, which contained the celebrated article that stung the poet so cruelly.

"The poesy of this young lord," began the reviewer, "bo

longs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit. . . . His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level than if they were so much stagnant water." And so on for three bantering pages, interspersed with specimens of the noble "minor's " stanzas.

This stinging satire, which would have crushed some young writers of verses, fixed Lord Byron in the career of letters. Promptly and vigorously he retorted in his poem, "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," in which he sung thus of the editor of the "Edinburgh Review":—

"Health to immortal Jeffrey! Once, in name,
England could boast a judge almost the same,
In soul so like, so merciful and just,
Some think that Satan has resigned his trust,
And given the spirit to the world again,
To sentence letters, as he sentenced men.
With hand less mighty, but with heart as black,
With voice as willing to decree the rack;

Bred in the courts, betimes, though all that law
As yet hath taught him is to find a flaw."

He proceeds to say that perhaps, if the whigs come into power, Jeffrey may become a judge, and if so, Jeffries, his predecessor on the bench, might greet him thus, while presenting him with a rope:

"Her to my virtues! man of equal mind!
Skilled to condemn as to traduce mankind,

This cord receive for thee reserved with care

To wield with judgment, and at length to wear."

This witty poem, in which all the noted authors of Scotland were remorselessly lashed, ran through many editions, and sufficiently consoled the wounded self-love of the young poet. The fame, however, of Lord Byron, dates from his twentyfourth year, when the publication of the first cantos of Childe Harold revealed to England the full splendor of his talents.

"I awoke one morning," said he, "and found myself fa mous."

Such was his popularity at one time, that ten thousand copies

of one of his poems were sold on the day of its publication at a price equal to nearly ten dollars each. But his errors as a man soon lost him the esteem of his countrymen; he was almost as extravagant as his father, and quite as dissolute, and, like his father, he squandered the fortune of his wife after he had ceased to be a husband to her.

FERNANDO MAGALHAENS.

THIS name, Magalhaens, appears on our maps as Magellan. Every school-boy knows Magellan's Straits and Magellan's Archipelago, so named in honor of their heroic and ill-fated discoverer. They were not so named by himself, however. Good Catholic as he was, he called the passage between Patagonia and Terra del Fuego the Strait of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. But this appellation was more pious than convenient, and, after the tragic death of Magalhaens, navigators called the strait by the name it now bears.

Fernando Magalhaens, a native of Portugal, was a boy about twelve years of age when the news of Columbus' great discovery and safe return reached Oporto, the city of his birth and education. At that time, Portugal, under the rule of an enterprising and fortunate king, was far more powerful and important than she is at present. It was a Portuguese fleet that first found the way to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope; and this led to a great and profitable trade with the Indies, which for many years enabled Portugal to take a leading part in the discovery and exploration of the western world. When Magalhaens came upon the stage of action, the King of Portugal had a numerous fleet, a great revenue, an imposing name, and extensive possessions in Asia. Such was his importance, that the Pope, in deciding rival claims to the newly found lands and islands, gave one-half to Spain and one-half to Portugal.

Magalhaens entered the Portuguese navy at an early age, and served in it with distinction for many years. He was in that famous expedition of the renowned Admiral Albuquerque, which ravaged the coasts of Africa and Asia for five years, and captured an enormous booty. Magalhaens took part in the siege and