n affairs. Nor did he have to wait
until age, or even until maturity, for verification of the saying of
his contemporary, Goethe, about the final fulfilment of the desires of
youth. What Hamilton desired in boyhood came to him promptly, almost as
by the rubbing of the lamp. We all know the story: how at fifteen he
found his way to New Jersey, whence extricating himself he went to
Columbia college; and how, while he was there, the Revolutionary war
broke out, making the lad drop his books at once to accept his
appointment as a major of artillery; and how naturally his career
flowed from that initial point. And in our own times Thackeray was
another product of a British colony, having been born in Calcutta, and
spending the first seven years of his childhood there. I will not
venture to say that I trace much colonial influence in his writings. He
may have been a true Indian at heart, but his novels are certainly
those of a club-man and a Londoner; and none of his essays disclose
very much of the Hindoo. Sainte-Claire Deville, again, one of the
truest of Frenchmen, was born, like Hamilton, in the Antilles.

But how many have there been who never found a real home, though they
sought it painfully and with tears! Byron, the predestinate wanderer,
and Rousseau, who never found rest, who complained that his birth was
but the beginning of his misfortunes, _le premier de mes
malheurs_--these are types of the less fortunate class. But we need
not multiply examples; it is the old story of wandering and
homelessness. How often is the homing effort made in vain! One would
fancy the air filled with piloting spirits that endeavor to find ways
of escape for the languishing body, spirits constantly coming and going
between the rock of exile and the far distant home. Sometimes the
effort succeeds, as we have seen; and sometimes it fails; the spirit
wastes itself in vain endeavor, passes away like the unnoticed melting
of a cloud. To spirits thus aspiring, thus failing, life is indeed what
old Desportes calls it, a bitter and thorny blossom, _une fleur
espineuse et poignante_. For what is the loss of opportunity but the
loss of the soul? and the conscious loss of opportunity may go on for a
lifetime, a protracted martyrdom. Take the case of any intelligent
exile, some wanderer in the Macerian desert, some refined person
unluckily born in Patagonia, who rejects the Patagonian ideals, who no
longer craves the most succulent of limpets gathe