"In what strange and dissimilar situations I have been thrown in life! I have lived in every rank at home and abroad, in comparative affluence-in poverty; I have looked on at the world, in all its gala dress of wealth, and rank, and beauty; of power, of station, and command of intellect; and I have seen it poor, and mean, and naked, the companion of gloomy solitudes, and the denizen of pathless forests; and yet found the same human passions; the same love and hate; the same jealousy and fear, courage and daring; the same desire for power, and the same wish to govern, in the red Indian of the prairie as in the starred noble of Europe. The proudest rank of civilised life has no higher boast than in the practice of such virtues as I have seen rife among the wild dwellers in the dark forest. Long habit of moving thus among my fellow men, has worn off much of that conventional reverence for class which forms the standing point of all our education at home. The tarred and weather-beaten sailor, if he be but a pleasant fellow, and has seen life, is to me as agreeable a companion as the greatest admiral that ever trod a quarter-deck. My delight has been thus, for many a year back, to ramble through the world, and look on its game like one who sits before the curtain, and has no concern with the actors save in so far as they amuse him.” CHARLES LEVER. [1842.] PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE ROYAL HIBERNIAN ACADEMY; J.P.; BIOGRAPHER OF BISHOP DOYLE, LADY MORGAN, LORD CLONCURRY, ETC.; AUTHOR OF BEFORE THE UNION," ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOL. I. PUBLIC LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1879. [All Rights Reserved.] $$.C. |