ngland from that unknown
country where he was born--one of those 12,000--the junior ensign of
Colonel Quin's regiment of Fusileers--was in a quite unheroic state of
corporal prostration a few hours after sailing; and an enemy, had he
boarded the ship, would have had easy work of him. From Portsmouth
we put into Plymouth, and took in fresh reinforcements. We were off
Finisterre on the 31st of July, so Esmond's table-book informs him: and
on the 8th of August made the rock of Lisbon. By this time the Ensign
was grown as bold as an admiral, and a week afterwards had the fortune
to be under fire for the first time--and under water, too,--his boat
being swamped in the surf in Toros Bay, where the troops landed. The
ducking of his new coat was all the harm the young soldier got in this
expedition, for, indeed, the Spaniards made no stand before our troops,
and were not in strength to do so.

But the campaign, if not very glorious, was very pleasant. New sights of
nature, by sea and land--a life of action, beginning now for the first
time--occupied and excited the young man. The many accidents, and the
routine of shipboard--the military duty--the new acquaintances, both of
his comrades in arms, and of the officers of the fleet--served to cheer
and occupy his mind, and waken it out of that selfish depression into
which his late unhappy fortunes had plunged him. He felt as if the ocean
separated him from his past care, and welcomed the new era of life which
was dawning for him. Wounds heal rapidly in a heart of two-and-twenty;
hopes revive daily; and courage rallies in spite of a man. Perhaps,
as Esmond thought of his late despondency and melancholy, and how
irremediable it had seemed to him, as he lay in his prison a few months
back, he was almost mortified in his secret mind at finding himself so
cheerful.

To see with one's own eyes men and countries, is better than reading all
the books of travel in the world: and it was with extreme delight and
exultation that the young man found himself actually on his grand tour,
and in the view of people and cities which he had read about as a boy.
He beheld war for the first time--the pride, pomp, and circumstance of
it, at least, if not much of the danger. He saw actually, and with
his own eyes, those Spanish cavaliers and ladies whom he had beheld
in imagination in that immortal story of Cervantes, which had been
the delight of his youthful leisure. 'Tis forty years since Mr. Esmond