It now lacked but a few days of being two years since Forrest left America, and he began to feel powerfully drawn homewards. It had been a period of unalloyed satisfaction, and he had much improved in many ways, from his intercourse with different forms and classes of society, from his contemplation of natural scenery in many lands, from his study of the masterpieces of art, from his criticism of the performances of the distinguished actors and actresses whom he saw, and from his reading of many valuable books, including, among lighter volumes, such works as those of Locke and Spinoza. In this long tour and deliberate tarry abroad, wisely chosen in his early manhood, before his nature had hardened in routine, with plenty of money, leisure, health, freedom, and aspiration, he had drunk his fill of joy. His brain and spine and ganglia saturated with an amorous drench of elemental force, drunk with every kind of potency, he swayed on his centres in revelling fulness of life. He had been in these two exempted years like Hercules in Olympus, with abundance of ambrosia and nectar and Hebe on his knee. But now his heart cried out for home, and the sense of duty urged him to gird up his loins for work again. Something of his feeling may be guessed from the fact that he had copied into his journal these lines of Byron: "What singular emotions fill Their bosoms who have been induced to roam, With fluttering doubts if all be well or ill, With love for many and with tears for some; All feelings which o'erleap the years long lost, And bring our hearts back to the starting-post." He took passage in the Poland, and, with no notable adventure on the voyage, arrived at New York on the 5th of August, 1836, to be received with cheers into the open arms of a crowd of his friends as he stepped ashore, prouder than ever of his birthright of American citizenship. CHAPTER XI. PROFESSIONAL TOUR IN GREAT BRITAIN.