But I am making a dissertation, instead of writing a letter.

I write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, with the islands of Elba and Corsica visible from my balcony, and my old friend the Mediterranean rolling blue at my feet.

As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions, and resist or endure those of others.
"I have the honour to be, truly, "Your obliged and faithful servant, "NOEL BYRON.
"To I.D'Israeli, Esq." The ill-starred expedition to Greece followed this letter.
* * * * * This work, conceived in youth, executed by the research of manhood, and associated with the noblest feelings of our nature, is an humble but fervent tribute, offered to the memory of those Master Spirits from whose labours, as BURKE eloquently describes, "their country receives permanent service: those who know how to make the silence of their closets more beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates, and camps." LITERARY CHARACTER..