Time passed, and the “affairs of the nation” got slowly under way. And the “assembled wisdom” of the commonwealth took up its profoundest problems. Debate after debate arose, and questions in which he had once taken the profoundest interest—but they had now no power to affect or inspire him. Into society he did not go at all; but left the Capitol only for his boarding-house, and his boarding-house only for a ride or a walk out into the country. So the session passed, and Mr. Sutherland had failed to distinguish himself, or to do credit to his constituents. He had apparently done no service to himself, his party, humanity or heaven. His best friends were surprised, grieved and disappointed in him. He returned home; met his constituents with the same apathetic, frozen indifference. What was the matter? It was scarcely credible even to himself that the sorrow that had fallen upon him—a sorrow no heavier apparently than that which falls upon many a man and woman, who nevertheless “take up their burden of life again,” and go on—should have so paralyzed his intellect and his will. Had all his motive power departed with Rosalie? Had she been the secret and the fountain of his mental and moral force? He had often said so and thought so, during her mortal life; and now it seemed to be demonstrated. He once thought of resigning his seat in the Senate, and spoke of his failing health as a reason for doing so; but his personal friends dissuaded him from his half-formed purpose. And about this time Lincoln Lauderdale wrote and invited Mark Sutherland to join him in a trip to England. Mr. Sutherland accepted the invitation. The friends met by appointment at St. Louis, and travelled in company to New York, and embarked together for Liverpool. The voyage was made. The summer was spent in travelling through England, Scotland and Ireland. And in the autumn they returned to the United States, and reached Washington City just before the meeting of Congress. The trip had been made without much benefit to the health and spirits of Mr. Sutherland. And Mr. Lauderdale, with much uneasiness in regard to the state of his friend, took leave of him in Washington, and departed for the South. The two Houses of Congress organized, in the course of time, and the nation’s business commenced. And again Mr. Sutherland sat a mere silent, handsome figure-head in his seat. In fact, it required—not travel and change of scene, not the offices of friendship, nor the distinctions of society, but some powerful emotion, something that should sound a trumpet-call to his heart and brain—some mental or moral shock—to rouse that dormant mind to life and action.