Delighted and charmed as I felt by that tribute of flattery which associated my name with one of the most brilliant actions of my country, yet hitherto I had experienced no touch of home or fatherland.

England was to me as the high and powerful head of my house, whose greatness and whose glory shed a halo far and near, from the proudest to the humblest of those that call themselves Britons; but Ireland was-the land of my birth,--the land of my earliest ties, my dearest associations,--the kind mother whose breath had fanned my brow in infancy, and for her in my manhood my heart beat with every throb of filial affection.

Need I say, then, how ardently I longed to turn homeward; for independent of all else, I could not avoid some self-reproach on thinking what might be the condition of those I prized the most on earth, at that very moment I was engaging in all the voluptuous abandonment, and all the fascinating excesses of a life of pleasure.

I wrote several letters home, but received no answer; nor did I, in the whole round of London society, meet with a single person who could give me information of my family or my friends.

The Easter recess had sent the different members of Parliament to their homes; and thus, within a comparatively short distance of all I cared for, I could learn nothing of their fate.
The invitations of the Prince Regent, which were, of course, to be regarded as commands, still detained me in London; and I knew not in what manner to escape from the fresh engagements which each day heaped upon me.