The memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald Author:Thomas Moore Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII Second visit to North America—With his regiment in Canada—Irish colonists in the backwoods—Military life—Constancy in love— I-ord Edward's liking ... more »for the Indi.in;. Tuf, warm attachment to Miss ,' of which we have already traced the first dawnings, continued unaltered through all this change of scene and society : though, from his silence on the subject, in every letter he wrote home, it would appear that, even to his mother, the habitual depository of all his thoughts, he had not yet confided the secret of his new passion. On his return to England, however, but a very short time elapsed before it became manifest not only how deeply and devotedly lie was atiadied, but, unluckily, how faint were the hopes of his ever succeeding in his suit. The Duke of Richmond, who felt naturally a warm interest in both parties, was very desirous, it seems, that the union should take place; but the father of the young lady decidedly opposed himself to it; and the more strongly to mark his decision on the subject, at length peremptorily forbade Ixml Edward his house. To be thus frustrated in any object whatever would have been, to a sanguine spirit like his, sufficiently mortifying; but in a pursuit like this where he had embarked all his fondest hopes, nor was without grounds for flattering himself that, but for this interference, he might have been successful, the effect of such a repulse in saddening and altogether unhinging his mind, may be, without difficulty, conceived. Finding that his spirits, instead of rallying, were, on the contrary, sinking every day, more and more, under this disappointment, while, from the want of any active and regular employment, his mind was left helplessly the victim of its own broodings, he resolved to try how far absence and occupation ...« less