“And now to what should I betake myself?  I had small time to cast about me, and was easy to please; any tolerably promising enterprise, so the field of it were remote, would serve my purpose.  The papers were full of Australian speculations, the wonderful prosperity of the several colonies there, the great fortunes suddenly made in wool.  Good!  I would go to Australia, and be a gentle shepherd on an imposing scale.  But first I sought out my father’s old friends, my Lords Palmerston and Brougham, and the Bishop of Dublin, and besought the aid of their wisdom.  With but slight prudential hesitation they with one accord approved my project.  Observe:  a first-rate Minister, especially if he be a very busy one, always likes the plan that pleases his young friend best,—­that is, if it be not an affair of State, and all the risks lie with his young friend.  They would have spoken of Turin and Zea-Bermudez; but I had been bred a diplomat and knew how to stick to my point, which, this time, was wool.  In another fortnight I had sailed for Sydney with my shekels and my wife.  But first, and for the first time, I caused the announcement of my marriage to appear in the principal papers of London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and Madrid.

“Arrived in Australia, I at once made myself the proprietor of a considerable farm, and stocked it abundantly with sheep.  Speculation had not yet burst itself, like the frog in the fable; and large successes, as in water-lot and steamboat operations here, to-day, were the rule.  On the third anniversary of my landing at Sydney, I was worth three hundred thousand pounds, and my commercial name was among the best in the colony.  Six months after that, the rot, the infernal rot, had turned my thriving populous pastures into shambles for carrion-mutton, and I had not sixpence of my own in the wide world.  A few of the more generous of my creditors left me a hundred pounds with which to make my miserable way to some South American port on the Pacific.

“So I chose Valparaiso, to paint miniatures, and teach English, French, Italian, and German in.  But earthquakes shook my poor house, and the storm-fiend shook my soul with fear;—­for skies in lightning and thunder are to me as the panorama and hurly-burly of the Day of Wrath, in all the stupid rushing to and fro and dazed stumbling of Martin’s great picture.  I shall surely die by lightning; I have not had that live shadow of a sky-reaching fear hanging over me, with its black wings and awful mutterings, so long for nothing; in every flash my eyes are scathed by the full blaze of hell.  If I had been deaf and blind, I might have lived in Valparaiso.  As it was, I must go somewhere where I need not sit all day and night stopping my ears and with my face covered, fearing that the rocks would fall upon me too soon.

“So, with my wife and the child,—­we have had no other, thank God!—­I got round Cape Horn—­Heaven knows how!  I dare not think of that time—­to the United States.  We were making for Boston; but the ship, strained by long stress of heavy weather, sprung a leak, and we put in at Baltimore.  I was pleased with the place; it is picturesque, and has a kindly look; and as all places were alike to me then, save by the choice of a whim, I let go my weary anchor there.