f the Bath; though sought in many a dangerous path,
he had not found his golden spurs.

Regiments have been disbanded, his comrades are scattered, and he
himself has nothing to do, not even the poor resource of having to
study economy on half-pay, or of looking for more additional means to
eke out a living.

It is the curse of those entirely engrossing pursuits, which excite
all our enthusiasm, and task every energy, and of which the
statesman's and the soldier's callings are the best examples, that,
when they fail us, we can find no substitute. All things else are, by
comparison, stale, flat, and unprofitable. Can the brandy drinker
cheer himself with draughts of small beer? Screw up his nervous
energies to their accustomed tone with slops?

Tired to death of fox-hunting, pleasant shooting, and country
neighbors; all the means of excitement around him exhausted, L'Isle
lounged in the library at C----d Hall, with half a dozen open but
discarded volumes before him, revolving in his mind all possible means
of occupation. At one time he would resolve to travel the world over,
and get up a personal narrative, attractive as that of Humboldt, and
views of nature, that should look through nature's surface to the
recognition of Nature's God, whom the philosopher seems never to have
found in all his works. At another time, in order more effectively to
counteract the ill effects, on mind and habits, of the soldier's
exciting and unsettled life, he resolves to subject himself to still
severer regimen: not to go rambling about the world, an idling
philosopher, but to tie himself down to one spot, and take violently
to a course of high farming; grow the largest turnips, breed the
fattest South-downs, and the heaviest Devonshires, and carry off
agricultural prizes as substitutes for additional Waterloo medals.

But this was too severe a contrast to his late mode of life, and the
prospect soon disgusted him utterly. Having strong influence to back
him, he now thought of getting a seat in Parliament, and for a moment
the prophetic cries of 'Hear! hear!' arose from both sides of a full
House of Commons. But he knew that the occasion, even more than the
man, makes the orator; and in 'this weak piping time of peace,' these
cost-counting, debt-paying days, he foresaw no occasion that could
call forth the thunders of Demosthenes or Burke.--But although a new
light shines in upon him, and he suddenly makes up his mind that,
since he can