months earlier than was actually the case, for the temptation of making a further exploration by returning to England via the Mississippi and New Orleans proved too strong to be resisted; and in company with an Indian chief who had himself paid a visit to England, he carried out the plan, passing through native villages, canoeing down rivers, and dancing with Indian ladies, whose manners he found particularly to his taste. At Detroit, it is true, his spirits were a little shadowed by the necessity of parting with a fellow-traveller-he does not mention of which sex ; but, remembering that les plus courtes folies sont les meilleures, he found consolation at the same place in his adoption into the Bear Tribe of native Indians, whose chief, after a fashion that has found a parallel in later days, formally inducting his friend Lord Edward FitzGerald into the tribe as one of its chiefs, bestowed upon him the name of Eghnidal, "for which I hope he will remember me as long as he lives."

The journey was not one to be accomplished quickly. It was only in December that the traveller reached New Orleans, where a shock awaited him.

Cut off from communication with England during his wanderings, he had received no news from home for months; and when at last letters reached him, they conveyed the intelligence of an event which involved the final downfall of the hopes which had buoyed him up throughout his voluntary exile. The girl upon whom his heart had been set had married another man.

Writing in May of this year, his aunt Lady Sarah Napier gives free expression to her own indignation at the treatment her nephew had received. While the "dear spirited boy" had been living in wild woods to pass the time till the consent of her parents to his marriage with the cousin he adored could be obtained, they had cruelly married her to Lord Apsley (afterwards Lord Bathurst), and the ungrateful girl had consented. "We dread," adds Lady Sarah, "the effect this news will have on him."

It was undoubtedly a blow, sharp and severe. Yet one cannot but think, reading the letters written by him when the wound was still fresh, that it was scarcely so crushing a one as his aunt feared or as his biographer-a poet and something of a courtier too, and writing when the lady was still alive-would have us believe. That he felt the disappointment keenly there is no more reason to doubt than that, had his love been true to him, he would have also remained faithful. But his language was neither that of a broken-hearted man, nor of one who desired to assume that attitude.

Writing to his brother, he acknowledges the letter which had brought him the news; and using the Spanish language-a task which no man labouring under the stress of overpowering grief would have set himself-he declared that he was submitting with patience to all human vicissitudes.

In a second letter on the same subject, dated two or three weeks later, a strain of bitterness mingled.

"I bore all the accounts of Georgina tolerably well. I must say with Cardenis, That which her beauty has built up, her actions have destroyed. By the first I understood her to be an angel; by the last I know her to be a woman.' But this is enough of this disagreeable subject."

de

In the same letter he sends his love to dear Madame "who, upon cool consideration, is as charming a creature as is in the world-in fact, she is sincere, which is a quality rather rare."

If a blow had been inflicted upon his faith in human nature by the infidelity of his cousin, one cannot but believe, judging by the sequel, that it was one that quickly recovered. It might have been well for Lord Edward himself-well also for the cause to which he was to devote himself-had his confidence in the sincerity of human kind been less.

Thus ended Lord Edward's second love affair. It is said that another dramatic incident came near to being added to the story. On his arrival in London after his prolonged absence he had hurried at once to his mother's house, where it so chanced that she was that evening entertaining her niece, Lady Apsley, and her husband at dinner. It was only by the recognition of Lord Edward's voice outside by another cousin, General Fox, and by his prompt interposition, that the discarded lover was prevented from introducing a disconcerting and unexpected element into the family party.

CHAPTER VII

1790-1792

Lord Edward offered Command of the Cadiz Expedition-
Refuses it on being returned to Parliament-Decisive
Entry on Politics-In London-Charles James Fox-
Dublin-Condition of Ireland-Whig Club Society of
United Irishmen-Thomas Paine and his Friends-Lord
Edward in Paris.

THE

HERE is something strange and relentless, to the eyes of those who follow the course of Lord Edward's history, in the manner in which his doom-the doom of a cause-hunted him down. He had not sought it. In character and temperament he was most unlike a man destined to be the chief actor in a tragedy. But there was no escape. It drew closer and closer, like what in truth it was, the Angel of Death.

Almost immediately upon his arrival in London a proposal was made to him. Had the plan with which it was concerned been carried into effect, the whole course of his subsequent career might have been changed.

He was still, before everything, a soldier. His political views, pronounced as they were, had as yet

taken no practical or revolutionary shape. He was committed to no course of action from which he could not, in honour, have withdrawn. For politics

as a profession it has been shown that he had little liking; while his recent experience of the difficulties in which he was liable to find himself at any moment involved by a change of front on the part of his brother may reasonably have inclined him to regard with additional distaste the position he held in the House as the Duke's nominee. Under these circumstances the Dissolution occurring in the spring of the year which saw which saw his return to England must have been peculiarly welcome, as releasing him from the necessity of once more taking up the burden of his Parliamentary duties. He came home, as he imagined, a free man, neither contemplating nor desiring the continuance of a political career, and at liberty to devote himself for the future to the profession he loved that of a soldier. It was while labouring under this misapprehension that he received and accepted an offer made to him by the Government, through the instrumentality of the Duke of Richmond.

Struck by the good use to which his nephew had put the opportunities of observation afforded him both during his tour in Spain and his more recent visit to the Spanish colonies, the Duke had invited him to meet Pitt and Dundas, with the result of an offer both of brevet promotion and of the command of an expedition shortly to be despatched against Cadiz.

The prospect may well have been dazzling to a