ary, I could not help feeling that
every luxury of my life was bought by my surrender of that career which had
elated me in my own esteem, and which, setting a high and noble ambition
before me, taught me to be a man.

To be happy, one must not only fulfil the duties and exactions of his
station, but the station itself must answer to his views and aspirations
in life. Now, mine did not sustain this condition: all that my life had
of promise was connected with the memory of her who never could share my
fortunes; of her for whom I had earned praise and honor; becoming ambitious
as the road to her affection, only to learn after, that my hopes were but a
dream, and my paradise a wilderness.

While thus the inglorious current of my life ran on, I was not indifferent
to the mighty events the great continent of Europe was witnessing. The
successes of the Peninsular campaign; the triumphant entry of the
British into France; the downfall of Napoleon; the restoration of the
Bourbons,--followed each other with the rapidity of the most common-place
occurrences; and in the few short years in which I had sprung from boyhood
to man's estate, the whole condition of the world was altered. Kings
deposed; great armies disbanded; rightful sovereigns restored to their
dominions; banished and exiled men returned to their country, invested with
rank and riches; and peace, in the fullest tide of its blessings, poured
down upon the earth devastated and blood-stained.

Years passed on; and between the careless abandonment to the mere amusement
of the hour, and the darker meditation upon the past, time slipped away.
From my old friends and brother officers I heard but rarely. Power, who at
first wrote frequently, grew gradually less and less communicative. Webber,
who had gone to Paris at the peace, had written but one letter; while, from
the rest, a few straggling lines were all I received. In truth be it told,
my own negligence and inability to reply cost me this apparent neglect.

It was a fine evening in May, when, rigging up a sprit-sail, I jumped into
my yawl, and dropped easily down the river. The light wind gently curled
the crested water, the trees waved gently and shook their branches in the
breeze, and my little barque, bending slightly beneath, rustled on her
foamy track with that joyous bounding motion so inspiriting to one's
heart. The clouds were flying swiftly past, tinging with their shadows the
mountains beneath; the Munster s