In this unpleasant state of his domestic relations, the character of Captain Wilde Seemed to undergo an entire transformation.  From being remarkable for his love of quiet retirement, he became restless and dissatisfied; and instead of laughing, as formerly, at public employment as only vanity and vexation, he, now that a greater vexation assailed him in his once peaceful home, eagerly sought relief, not, as a younger or less virtuous man might have done, in dissipation, but in the distractions of public business.  But here again his evil fortune granted the desired boon in a shape pregnant with future disaster.  The hostility of Mrs. Wilde’s family, which had now become deeply excited,—­combined with his own political heterodoxy,—­forbade any hope of attaining a place by popular choice; and in an evil hour his friends succeeded in procuring him the office of exciseman.

Now there is no peculiarity more marked in all the branches of the Anglo-Saxon race than the extreme impatience with which they submit to any direct interference of the government in the private affairs of the citizens; and no form of such interference has ever been so generally odious as the excise, and, by consequence, no officer so generally detested as the exciseman.  This feeling, on account of the very large number of persons engaged in distilling, was then formidably strong in Kentucky,—­all the more so that this form of taxation was a favorite measure of the existing Federal Administration.  Those who ventured to accept so hateful an office at the hands of so hated a government were sure to make themselves highly unpopular.  In time, when the people began to learn their own strength and the weakness of the authorities, the enforcement of the law became dangerous, and at last altogether impossible.  The writer has been told, by a gentleman holding a responsible position under our judicial system, that the name of his grandfather—­the last Kentucky exciseman—­to this day stands charged on the government-books with thousands of dollars arrears, although he was a man of great courage and not at all likely to be deterred from the discharge of his duty by any ordinary obstacle.

Such was the place sought and obtained by the unfortunate Wilde as a refuge from domestic wretchedness.  The consequence it was easy to foresee.  In a few months, he who had been accustomed to universal good-will became an object of almost as general dislike; and as people are apt to attribute all sorts of evil to one who has by any means incurred their hostility, and are never satisfied until they have blackened the whole character in which they have found one offensive quality, the family difficulties of the unpopular official soon became a theme of common scandal, all the blame, of course, being laid upon him.  This state of things, disagreeable in itself, proved most unfortunate in its influence on his subsequent fate; for, had he retained his previous popularity in the county,