THE BYRON FAMILY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 685, 4 June 1875, Page 3

THE BYRON FAMILY.

—o— At the rink one often secs many of the celebrities of Brighton, for sometimes there are as many as 2000 ’people, skaters and spectators, there at one time, and among such a number, of course mix many whose names are familiar to the public • tongue. Many times may ho soon there a fair woman upon whoso brown head falls the sunshine yet from the eastern horizon of life, whoso contours have a girlish roominess, but whose features begin to show the harsh touch of the chisel of care. Looking upon her one would believe" her to bo a girl yet for her years cannot bo more"than twentythree—one who has been a veryl’Psyche of girls, and is not yet far separated from a radiant, buoyant youth. And yet this fair woman is one whoso name has been smirched and whose fame tarnished by one of the most monstrous scandals of fashonable English society. She is the wife of a member of the proudest aristocracy in the world, who is heir to two earldoms and whoso wealth is so great that ho himself hardly knows its extent.

This is Lord Wentworth, son of Lady Lovelace who was “Ada, sole daughter of the heart and home” of the poet, Lord Byron. By the paternal line he well inherit the titles and honors of Lord Lovelace by the maternal he came, into possession of his present one. It would .seem that some dreadful curse bad fallen upon this family to make its domestic iv-sts foul with 'toads and vipers, and all unclean things. Ada Byron, the first Lady Lovelace, was of a very peculiar temperament, inheriting from her father the morbid conditions which, in his case, were a reactionary effect of emotional delusions, but in hers a constitutional depression. Lady Lovelace, Ada Byron, transmitted a peculiar mental constitution to her sons. The elder, Lord Ockam, who would have been Lord Wentworth bad he not died before the title descended from an elder brauch, was a youth of many abnormal tastes and eccentric habits In his early youth he abandoned his homo, his luxurious habits, and all the refined associations of his rank, and worked for a month in a blacksmith’s shop. Later in life he married a publican’s daughter, and it is not unreasonable to suppose^hat the curse of his race, a domestic blight or tragedy, would have come also to ’him had he not died soon after his’marsiage. Dying childless, the title, which is now Lord Wentworth’s, passed overturn to Lady Lovelace’s second son, who now hears it. And now this son, i ord Wentworth, rich noble, only thirty-two, and the husband of a wife so beautiful-that when she appeared a bride in Loudon assemblies, stately dowagers and Mother-of-the Gracchi matrons mounted chairs and 'tables to look upon her over intervening heads as she passed—it would seem that he must indeed be the man whose garment could curs the King’s malady. But no! Marrying in haste a beautiful girl, whoso graces were those that enchant only the senses, he repented at leisure, when the glamour melted from before his sight, aud he saw that the bright eyes had no shadowed depths ; that the merry laugh bespoke a vacant mind ; that the woman was but an airy nothing, the most impalpable shimmer of a bubble behind her'bcautiful face.

It is told of this nobleman that one evening, going into the theatre, he made a bet with one of his companions that he would marry the most beautiful woman at the play that night. It chanced that the lovely daughter of a Newcastle clergyman occupied a stall near enough to the young men for them to discover that she was lovely enough to have contested for the golden apple in the gift of Paris; and before the curtain had fallen upon the drama of that night the tragedy of their lives had begun, for Lord Wentworth determined on the spot to make the fair girl his wife. On the subsequent appearance of the couple in the divorce courts, of the shameful charges brought against the wife, of the dreadful countercharges brought against the husband, who seemed to have in him the morbid taiut of his ancestry, all England, which has a passion for spicy bits of aristocratic scandal, knows full well.

Behind Time.—The back of a clock. The John Bull, a religions newspaper strongly condemns the Moudy-cum-Sankey performances, as mischievous in character and result -Thus we have converted thieves andhurglars, converted prize-fighters converted colliers, converted clowns, and converted gipsies in the ‘ pulpit,’ or thrust forward on platforms to detail their experiences. A certain number of such persons may he credited with honesty of feeling and honesty of purpose hut it is equallynotorious that many who have been, or are still mixed up with sensational religionism as prominent performers, are arrant imposters who are merely making dupes of their supporters, and earning a very good and comfortable livolhood out of the credulity of a certain section of the public. The whole system of sensational preaching and preachers and cf revivalist meetings, as generally conducted is fraught with abuse and multifarious evils and though here and there a hearer overcome by excitement, is turned from the error of his ways, little permanent good is effected, and the conversions are more frequently than not of a temporary character; while direct insanity or outrageous fanaticism is often the result revivalist movements as even the relatively moderate proceedings of Messrs Moody and Sankey testify. The history of so-called ‘ revivals’ in all ages and countries with whatever form of Christianity they have been connected, when they have chiefly depended on sensational service and preaching, is not of such a character as would lead reasonable persons to anticipate much good to result from such revivals in the present day, and in this country. Merc mental excitement and spiritual hysteria is not that ‘ true religou’ preached and taught by the Great Master and Ills apostles, or by the fathers of the early church.