After lingering for some years in London, fêted by the great and followed by the little, Moore was appointed to an office in the West Indies. Thus was harshly hazarded the life of a man of genius; and the talent which was destined to distinguish his country was sent to take its chance of the yellow fever. The guest of princes and the favourite of fashion must have felt many a pang at finding himself consigned to Bermuda. The poetic romance of the “still vext Bermoothes” was probably insufficient to console him for the pavilion at Brighton, and the soirees of Portman Square. But necessity must not deliberate—the _res angusta domi_ was imperative—and the bard submitted to banishment with the grace and gaiety that never forsook him. The appointment was unfortunate. Connected with the public revenue, it had been transacted by deputy; and Moore, on his arrival, found himself answerable for the chasms in the official chest. No one charged _him_ with those chasms. But, as the lawyers hold, “the Crown makes no bad debts,” the unlucky poet was responsible in a sum which would have mortgaged all Parnassus, and made the Nine insolvent. The appointment was finally resigned, and Moore, _solutus negotiis_, shook off the dust of his feet against the gates of the West Indies. Taking advantage of his proximity to America, he now resolved to visit the great Republic, Canada, and the wonder of the Transatlantic world, Niagara! America was made by Moore the subject of some spirited poetry; but it had another effect, less expected, yet equally natural—it cured him of Republicanism. The lofty superstitions which haunt the sepulchres of Greece and Rome, the angry ambition which stimulated the Irish patriot into revolt, or that fantasy of righting the wrongs of all mankind, which put live coals into the hands of the Frenchman to heap on the altar of imaginary freedom, were all extinguished by the hard reality before his eyes. He found the Americans, as all have found them, vigorous, active, and persevering in their own objects; men of canals, corduroy roads, and gigantic warehouses; sturdy reclaimers of the swamp and the forest; bold backwoodsmen, and shrewd citizens, as they ought to be; but neither poets nor painters, nor touched with the tendernesses of romance, nor penetrating the profound of philosophy. Even their patriotism startled the mourner over the sufferings of the _Isle of Saints_; and the _Ledger_, more honoured than the _Legend_, offended all his reveries of a “Paradise beyond the main, Unknown to lucre, lash, and chain.”