arly life bears us along. Our first
scrape generally leads to our first travel. Disappointment requires
change of air; desperation change of scene. Egremont quitted his
country, never to return to it again; and returned to it after a year
and a-half's absence, a much wiser man. Having left England in a serious
mood, and having already tasted with tolerable freedom of the pleasures
and frivolities of life, he was not in an inapt humour to observe, to
enquire, and to reflect. The new objects that surrounded him excited his
intelligence; he met, which indeed is the principal advantage of travel,
remarkable men, whose conversation opened his mind. His mind was worth
opening. Energies began to stir of which he had not been conscious;
awakened curiosity led him to investigate and to read; he discovered
that, when he imagined his education was completed, it had in fact
not commenced; and that, although he had been at a public school and
a university, he in fact knew nothing. To be conscious that you are
ignorant is a great step to knowledge. Before an emancipated intellect
and an expanding intelligence, the great system of exclusive manners
and exclusive feelings in which he had been born and nurtured, began to
tremble; the native generosity of his heart recoiled at a recurrence
to that arrogant and frigid life, alike devoid of sympathy and real
grandeur.

In the early spring of 1837, Egremont re-entered the world, where he had
once sparkled, and which he had once conceived to comprise within its
circle all that could interest or occupy man. His mother, delighted
at finding him again under her roof, had removed some long-standing
coolness between him and his elder brother; his former acquaintance
greeted him with cordiality, and introduced him to the new heroes who
had sprung up during the season of his absence. Apparently Egremont was
not disinclined to pursue, though without eagerness, the same career
that had originally engaged him. He frequented assemblies, and lingered
in clubs; rode in the park, and lounged at the opera. But there was this
difference in his existence, before and since his travels: he was now
conscious he wanted an object; and was ever musing over action, though
as yet ignorant how to act. Perhaps it was this want of being roused,
that led him, it may be for distraction, again to the turf. It was a
pursuit that seemed to him more real than the life of saloons, full of
affectation, perverted ideas, and fac