rs! How
hopeless for the adventurous spirit to war with the stern discipline of
an age that marshalled men in ranks like soldiers, and told that each
could only rise by successive steps! How often have I wondered was there
any more of adventure left in life? Were there incidents in store for
him who, in the true spirit of an adventurer, should go in search of
them? As for the newer worlds of Australia and America, they did not
possess for me much charm. No great association linked them with the
past; no echo came out of them of that heroic time of feudalism, so
peopled with heart-stirring characters. The life of the bush or the
prairie had its incidents, but they were vulgar and commonplace; and
worse, the associates and companions of them were more vulgar still.
Hunting down Pawnees or buffaloes was as mean and ignoble a travesty
of feudal adventure as was the gold diggings at Bendigo of the learned
labors of the alchemist. The perils were unexciting, the rewards prosaic
and commonplace. No. I felt that Europe--in some remote regions--and the
East--in certain less visited tracts--must be the scenes best suited to
my hopes. With considerable labor I could spell my way through a German
romance, and I saw, in the stories of Fouque, and even of Goethe, that
there still survived in the mind of Germany many of the features which
gave the color-ing to a feudal period. There was, at least, a dreamy
indifference to the present, a careless abandonment to what the hour
might bring forth, so long as the dreamer was left to follow out his
fancies in all their mysticism, that lifted men out of the vulgarities
of this work-o'-day world; and I longed to see a society where
learning consented to live upon the humblest pittance, and beauty dwelt
unflattered in obscurity.

I was now entering upon manhood; and my father--having, with that
ambition so natural to an Irish parent who aspires highly for his only
son, destined me for the bar--made me a student of Trinity College,
Dublin.

What a shock to all the romance of my life were the scenes into which I
now was thrown! With hundreds of companions to choose from, I found
not one congenial to me. The reading men, too deeply bent upon winning
honors, would not waste a thought upon what could not advance their
chances of success. The idle, only eager to get through their career
undetected in their ignorance, passed lives of wild excess or stupid
extravagance.

What was I to do amongst su