Rather than re-awaken the discussion, so unsparing, so painful, and so indelicate, which had been carried on so many years around that loved form, now sanctified by death, they sacrificed the dear pleasure of the memorials, and the interests of mankind, who have an indefeasible right to all the help that can be got from the truth of history as to the living power of virtue, and the reality of that great victory that overcometh the world.
There are thousands of poor victims suffering in sadness, discouragement, and poverty; heart-broken wives of brutal, drunken husbands; women enduring nameless wrongs and horrors which the delicacy of their sex forbids them to utter,--to whom the lovely letters lying hidden away under those seals might bring courage and hope from springs not of this world.
But though the friends of Lady Byron, perhaps from despair of their kind, from weariness of the utter injustice done her, wished to cherish her name in silence, and to confine the story of her virtues to that circle who knew her too well to ask a proof, or utter a doubt, the partisans of Lord Byron were embarrassed with no such scruple.
Lord Byron had artfully contrived during his life to place his wife in such an antagonistic position with regard to himself, that his intimate friends were forced to believe that one of the two had deliberately and wantonly injured the other.

The published statement of Lady Byron contradicted boldly and point-blank all the statement of her husband concerning the separation; so that, unless she was convicted as a false witness, he certainly was.
The best evidence of this is Christopher North's own shocked, astonished statement, and the words of the Noctes Club.
The noble life that Lady Byron lived after this hushed every voice, and silenced even the most desperate calumny, while she was in the world.

In the face of Lady Byron as the world saw her, of what use was the talk of Clytemnestra, and the assertion that she had been a mean, deceitful conspirator against her husband's honour in life, and stabbed his memory after death?
But when she was in her grave, when her voice and presence and good deeds no more spoke for her, and a new generation was growing up that knew her not; then was the time selected to revive the assault on her memory, and to say over her grave what none would ever have dared to say of her while living.
During these last two years, I have been gradually awakening to the evidence of a new crusade against the memory of Lady Byron, which respected no sanctity,--not even that last and most awful one of death.
Nine years after her death, when it was fully understood that no story on her side or that of her friends was to be forthcoming, then her calumniators raked out from the ashes of her husband's sepulchre all his bitter charges, to state them over in even stronger and more indecent forms.
There seems to be reason to think that the materials supplied by Lord Byron for such a campaign yet exist in society.
To 'The Noctes' of November 1824, there is the following note apropos to a discussion of the Byron question:-- 'Byron's Memoirs, given by him to Moore, were burned, as everybody knows.

But, before this, Moore had lent them to several persons.

Mrs.
Home Purvis, afterwards Viscountess of Canterbury, is known to have sat up all one night, in which, aided by her daughter, she had a copy made.