CHAPTER XIII.
THE JOURNEY.
The election concluded, the turmoil and excitement of the contest over, all was fast resuming its accustomed routine around us, when one morning my uncle informed me that I was at length to leave my native county and enter upon the great world as a student of Trinity College, Dublin.

Although long since in expectation of this eventful change, it was with no slight feeling of emotion I contemplated the step which, removing me at once from all my early friends and associations, was to surround me with new companions and new influences, and place before me very different objects of ambition from those I had hitherto been regarding.
My destiny had been long ago decided.

The army had had its share of the family, who brought little more back with them from the wars than a short allowance of members and shattered constitutions; the navy had proved, on more than one occasion, that the fate of the O'Malleys did not incline to hanging; so that, in Irish estimation, but one alternative remained, and that was the bar.

Besides, as my uncle remarked, with great truth and foresight, "Charley will be tolerably independent of the public, at all events; for even if they never send him a brief, there's law enough in the family to last _his_ time,"-- a rather novel reason, by-the-bye, for making a man a lawyer, and which induced Sir Harry, with his usual clearness, to observe to me:-- "Upon my conscience, boy, you are in luck.

If there had been a Bible in the house, I firmly believe he'd have made you a parson." Considine alone, of all my uncle's advisers, did not concur in this determination respecting me.