On a dull day in April I took my place, a solitary traveller, in the Shrewsbury coach, quite ignorant as to the road I was to travel, and far less at home than I should have been in the wildest part of North America, or on the deck of a ship bound to circumnavigate the globe. We rattled out of London, and the first thing that at all roused my attention was a moonlight view of Oxford, where we stopped at midnight to change horses. Those old grey towers, and mighty masses of ancient building, on which the silvery ray fell with fine effect, awoke in my bosom two melancholy trains of thought; one was the recollection of my father, whose enthusiastic attachment to his own university had often provoked warm discussion with the no less attached Cantabs of our old social parties, and who often held out to me, as the greatest of earthly gratifications, a visit with him to that seat of learning which he would describe in glowing colors. But where was my father now? His poor girl, the delight of his eyes and treasure of his heart, was in Oxford, with none to guide, none to guard, none to speak a cheering word to her. I shrunk back in the coach, and grieved over this till a sudden turning once more threw before me the outline of some magnificent old fabric bathed in moonlight, and that called up a fit of patriotism, calculated to darken, yet more the prospect before me. This was England, my own proud England; and these "the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces," that distinguished her seats of learning above all others, I was bound for Ireland. What English young lady had ever studied the history of that remote, half-civilized settlement, called Ireland? Not I, certainly, nor any of my acquaintance; but I took it for granted that Ireland had no antiquities, nothing to distinguish her from other barbarous lands, except that her people ate potatoes, made blunders, and went to mass. I felt it a sort of degradation to have an Irish name, and to go there as a resident; but comforted myself by resolving never in one particular to give in to any Irish mode of living, speaking, or thinking, and to associate only with such as had been at least educated in England.