About this time, 1801-2, he spent a good deal of his time at Donington Park, the seat of the Earl of Moira, “under whose princely roof,” as he says himself—(and great was the charm which these princely roofs ever had for the poet!) “I used often and long in those days find a hospitable home.” Here the young Irishman became somewhat intimate with kings and princes—members of Bourbon and Orleans families of France; for whom he was in the habit of playing and singing, and with whom he could bandy courtesies and converse. These were the Count of Provence, afterward Charles X.; Louis Philippe and his brothers Montpensier and Beaujolais—“all dismounted cavalry,” as Curran called them, in a whisper, when he first found himself sitting among them; and with these the Duke de Lorge, the Baron de Rolle, and many others of the emigrant _noblesse_. No wonder Moore’s ideas should be so redolent of sparkling wines, exquisite shapes of beauty, and all the perfume and rose-color of life. He lived at Donington in the happiest and most luxurious manner; and the range of a magnificent library was not wanting to complete the aristocratic charm of his existence at that period. Shut up in it for whole days he has felt, in the midst of his schemes of authorship, like Prospero in his enchanted island. How different was the fate of his old friend, Robert Emmett! At that very time the latter was plotting desperately against the English government, and preparing that rebellious uprising in which he perished. In 1803, at the early age of 23, Moore began to reap some of the solid fruits of his connection with the English aristocracy. He got the place of Registrar of the Court of Admiralty at Bermuda, through the interest of the Earl of Moira, and went to the island to take possession of his office. But instead of doing the duties of it, he procured a deputy, and went rambling and rhyming over the islands and on the continent of America. He highly enjoyed the natural softness and beauty of the Summer Islands; but many a song and poetical epistle proved that “his heart was in Albion—his heart was not there”—that he was sighing for what he called The flourishing Isle of the brave and the free, the splendid hospitalities of Donington and the _pays de cocagne_ of the British aristocracy in general.