reinforcements.  We were off Finisterre on the 31st of July, so Esmond’s table-book informs him:  and on the 8th of August made the rock of Lisbon.  By this time the Ensign was grown as bold as an admiral, and a week afterwards had the fortune to be under fire for the first time—­and under water, too,—­his boat being swamped in the surf in Toros Bay, where the troops landed.  The ducking of his new coat was all the harm the young soldier got in this expedition, for, indeed, the Spaniards made no stand before our troops, and were not in strength to do so.

But the campaign, if not very glorious, was very pleasant.  New sights of nature, by sea and land—­a life of action, beginning now for the first time—­occupied and excited the young man.  The many accidents, and the routine of shipboard—­the military duty—­the new acquaintances, both of his comrades in arms, and of the officers of the fleet—­served to cheer and occupy his mind, and waken it out of that selfish depression into which his late unhappy fortunes had plunged him.  He felt as if the ocean separated him from his past care, and welcomed the new era of life which was dawning for him.  Wounds heal rapidly in a heart of two-and-twenty; hopes revive daily; and courage rallies in spite of a man.  Perhaps, as Esmond thought of his late despondency and melancholy, and how irremediable it had seemed to him, as he lay in his prison a few months back, he was almost mortified in his secret mind at finding himself so cheerful.

To see with one’s own eyes men and countries, is better than reading all the books of travel in the world:  and it was with extreme delight and exultation that the young man found himself actually on his grand tour, and in the view of people and cities which he had read about as a boy.  He beheld war for the first time—­the pride, pomp, and circumstance of it, at least, if not much of the danger.  He saw actually, and with his own eyes, those Spanish cavaliers and ladies whom he had beheld in imagination in that immortal story of Cervantes, which had been the delight of his youthful leisure.  ’Tis forty years since Mr. Esmond witnessed those scenes, but they remain as fresh in his memory as on the day when first he saw them as a young man.  A cloud, as of grief, that had lowered over him, and had wrapped the last years of his life in gloom, seemed to clear away from Esmond during this fortunate voyage and campaign.  His energies seemed to awaken and to expand under a cheerful sense of freedom.  Was his heart secretly glad to have escaped from that fond but ignoble bondage at home?  Was it that the inferiority to which the idea of his base birth had compelled him, vanished with the knowledge of that secret, which though, perforce, kept to himself, was yet enough to cheer and console him?  At any rate, young Esmond of the army was quite a different being to the sad little dependant of the kind Castlewood household, and the melancholy student of Trinity Walks;