Enough, the heads of the _Times_ establishment, perhaps already the Marquis of Wellesley and other important persons, had their eye on this writer; and it began to be surmised by him that here at last was the career he had been seeking.
Accordingly, in 1814, when victorious Peace unexpectedly arrived; and the gates of the Continent after five-and-twenty years of fierce closure were suddenly thrown open; and the hearts of all English and European men awoke staggering as if from a nightmare suddenly removed, and ran hither and thither,--Edward Sterling also determined on a new adventure, that of crossing to Paris, and trying what might lie in store for him.
For curiosity, in its idler sense, there was evidently pabulum enough.
But he had hopes moreover of learning much that might perhaps avail him afterwards;--hopes withal, I have understood, of getting to be Foreign Correspondent of the _Times_ Newspaper, and so adding to his income in the mean while.

He left Llanblethian in May; dates from Dieppe the 27th of that month.

He lived in occasional contact with Parisian notabilities (all of them except Madame de Stael forgotten now), all summer, diligently surveying his ground;--returned for his family, who were still in Wales but ready to move, in the beginning of August; took them immediately across with him; a house in the neighborhood of Paris, in the pleasant village of Passy at once town and country, being now ready; and so, under foreign skies, again set up his household there.
Here was a strange new "school" for our friend John now in his eighth year! Out of which the little Anthony and he drank doubtless at all pores, vigorously as they had done in no school before.

A change total and immediate.

Somniferous green Llanblethian has suddenly been blotted out; presto, here are wakeful Passy and the noises of paved Paris instead.