o tie to
prevent him; he conceived that when he returned home he might be
induced to enter into political life, to which his having travelled
would be an advantage; and he wished to know the world by sight, and
to judge of men by experience.

When his satire was ready for the press, he carried it with him to
London. He was then just come of age, or about to be so; and one of
his objects in this visit to the metropolis was, to take his seat in
the House of Lords before going abroad; but, in advancing to this
proud distinction, so soothing to the self-importance of youth, he
was destined to suffer a mortification which probably wounded him as
deeply as the sarcasms of the Edinburgh Review. Before the meeting
of Parliament, he wrote to his relation and guardian, the Earl of
Carlisle, to remind him that he should be of age at the commencement
of the Session, in the natural hope that his Lordship would make an
offer to introduce him to the House: but he was disappointed. He
only received a formal reply, acquainting him with the technical mode
of proceeding, and the etiquette to be observed on such occasions.
It is therefore not wonderful that he should have resented such
treatment; and he avenged it by those lines in his satire, for which
he afterwards expressed his regret in the third canto of Childe
Harold.

Deserted by his guardian at a crisis so interesting, he was prevented
for some time from taking his seat in Parliament; being obliged to
procure affidavits in proof of his grandfather's marriage with Miss
Trevannion, which having taken place in a private chapel at Carhais,
no regular certificate of the ceremony could be produced. At length,
all the necessary evidence having been obtained, on the 13th of
March, 1809, he presented himself in the House of Lords alone--a
proceeding consonant to his character, for he was not so friendless
nor unknown, but that he might have procured some peer to have gone
with him. It, however, served to make his introduction remarkable.

On entering the House, he is described to have appeared abashed and
pale: he passed the woolsack without looking round, and advanced to
the table where the proper officer was attending to administer the
oaths. When he had gone through them, the chancellor quitted his
seat, and went towards him with a smile, putting out his hand in a
friendly manner to welcome him, but he made a stiff bow, and only
touched with the tip of his fingers the chancel