Yet, like the rainbow’s splendid dye,
They meet and disappear.
IV.
Ev’n so, the mirth of man is madness;—
His joy as a sepulchral light,
Which shows his solitude and sadness,
But chaseth not the night.
Such nearly was the lot of the last of the Hartpoles. He had scarcely commenced a flattering entrance into public life, when one false and fatal step, to which he was led first by a dreadful accident, and subsequently by his own benevolent disposition, worked on by the chicanery of others, laid the foundation of all his future miseries.
While quartered with his regiment at Galway, in Ireland, his gun, on a shooting party, burst in his hand, which was so shattered, that it was long before his surgeon could decide that amputation might be dispensed with.