It is worthy of remark that a plunge into London dissipation follows very close upon the disappointment of an honourable passion. Wolfe had a certain turn of mind which favoured matrimony "prodigiously," and he had fallen very much in love with Miss Lawson, Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales. But the old General and Mrs. Wolfe opposed the match --apparently on pecuniary grounds. "They have their eye upon one of L30,000." Miss Lawson had only L12,000. Parents had more authority then than they have now, Wolfe was exceedingly dutiful, and he allowed the old people, on whom, from the insufficiency of his pay, he was still partly dependent, to break off the affair. Such at least seems to have been the history of its termination. The way in which Wolfe records the catastrophe, it must be owned, is not very romantic. "This last disappointment in love has changed my natural disposition to such a degree that I believe it is now possible that I might prevail upon myself not to refuse twenty or thirty thousand pounds, if properly offered. Rage and despair do not commonly produce such reasonable effects; nor are they the instruments to make a man's fortune by but in particular cases." It was long, however, before he could think of Miss Lawson without a pang, and the sight of her portrait, he tells us, takes away his appetite for some days. At seven and twenty Wolfe left Scotland, having already to seven years' experience of warfare added five years' experience of difficult command. He is now able to move about a little and open his mind, which has been long cramped by confinement in Highland quarters. He visits an old uncle in Ireland, and, as one of the victors of Culloden, views with special interest that field of the Boyne, where in the last generation Liberty and Progress had triumphed over the House of Stuart. "I had more satisfaction in looking at this spot than in all the variety that I have met with; and perhaps there is not another piece of ground in the world that I could take so much pleasure to observe." Then, though with difficulty, he obtained the leave of the pipe-clay Duke to go to Paris. There he saw the hollow grandeur of the decaying monarchy and the immoral glories of Pompadour. "I was yesterday at Versailles, a cold spectator of what we commonly call splendour and magnificence. A multitude of men and women were assembled to bow and pay their compliments in the most submissive manner to a creature of their own species." He went into the great world, to which he gains admission with an ease which shows that he has a good position, and tries to make up his leeway in the graces by learning to fence, dance, and ride. He wishes to extend his tour and see the European armies; but the Duke inexorably calls him back to pipe-clay. It is proposed to him that he should undertake the tutorship of the young Duke of Richmond on a military tour through the Low Countries. But he declines the offer. "I