The Log-Book of a Rambler concludes with an account of a quarrel between the students and the professors at Heidelberg. To this university Lever transferred himself in the autumn of 1828, and after a short sojourn he proceeded to Vienna. In November his father, apologising for being unable to assist a relative in distress, declares that his rents were “being badly paid,” and that his son Charles was “no small charge” upon him. In the same letter James Lever says that Charles intended to pass the winter at Vienna, and then to proceed to Paris, and that he was expected to arrive at home in April or May. “He writes in good spirits,” says his father, “enjoys good health, and if I can supply him with money he does not wish to return soon.”

From Vienna the young student proceeded, early in 1829, to Weimar, and at the Academy he made the acquaintance of Goethe. He describes Goethe’s talk as being marked by touches of picturesque and inimitable description; he had the gift of holding his audience spell-bound by some magic which it was impossible to describe.

From Weimar Lever travelled through Bavaria. To a friend he once stated that not only had he “walked the hospitals” of Germany, but that he had “walked Germany itself, exploring everything.” Possibly this was an exaggerated account of his peregrinations through the Fatherland, but there can be no question that he saw at this time a great deal of Germany and of German life, and that his experiences impressed him and remained with him, vivid and pleasant memories.

In the beginning of March the wanderer found himself in Paris. From this city he wrote to his lifelong friend in Dublin, Alexander Spencer:—

“Paris, Friday, March 13,1829.

“I am perfectly ashamed of the rapid succession in which my letters of late have inundated the family, yet in my present state of doubt, &c., I think it better to write at once to prevent any further mischief. I yesterday received a letter from Connor (Joe), informing me that he had forwarded to me in Paris from Vienna a Dublin letter of the 28th of last month. Now none such has arrived, and I have received already letters from Vienna bearing date 2nd March. This delay has rendered me very unhappy about the ultimate fate of my letter, and as Connor has already left Vienna, I have no means of ascertaining anything about it there. I have written to him at [MS. undecipherable], where he is at present, but cannot receive his answer before five days, so that I think it better in the interval to stop payment of the bill, at all events until I can learn something about it. I have myself seen all the letters lately arrived in Paris from Vienna, so that its delay is in no wise attributable to the irregularity of the post in Paris.

“If this letter had arrived before, I should be now on my road homeward, but I am here in durance vile for want of it. But away with blue devils!

“Paris would be a delightful place had a man only ‘gilt’ enough: there are so many gay little varieties and vaudevilles, that you have never time to spare. The Palais Royal is a world in itself of all that is splendid and seducing, but with all these things a poor man has but a sorry time of it. Of the Italian Opera and of Verge I dare only read the carte, and content myself with a chop at Richard’s and the OpÉra Comique. Is it not (I ask you in all calmness) a thought that might lead to insanity to see these lucky ones of fortune sent out on their travels with fat purses, enjoying all the advantage of seeing and hearing what they neither relish nor comprehend, while many a poor fellow might reap advantage and improvement, but is debarred from the narrowness of his circumstances?

“I am now very anxious to see my family and find myself at home, although I believe I am now spending the last few days of a period I shall always call the happiest of my life. I look back on my time in Germany with one feeling of unmixed pleasure; if there be the least tinge of regret, it is only because the time can never return, and that my happiest days are already spent.

“As Don Juan says, I make a resolution every spring of reformation ere the year runs out, but I certainly have more confidence in myself now than I ever before had. I will go home, free myself from all fetters of every species of acquaintanceship that can only consume time and give nothing in return, put my shoulder to the wheel, and in one year I shall find if I am ever to turn out well or not.

“Like every man who has lost time and let good opportunities escape him without an effort to profit by them, I employ my leisure hours in wishes that I had to begin the world again.”

He speaks in a postscript of an English family who were stopping at his hotel:—

“I am going to convey one of the daughters, who is certainly pretty, to the Louvre to-day. She is to have £10,000, and that might not be a bad spec, but I should rather make my fortune by any other means....

“The old padrone had the impudence to half propose my going to Italy as tutor to his young cub, but I answered him very brusquely. He was certainly very spirited in his offer of compensation, but my prospects have not come to that as yet. Remember me most affectionately to father, mother, John, and Anne....

“I wrote to you a few lines on the selvage of my note to my father. As the tenor of them may not have been very intelligible, allow me to repeat. If any letter from Vienna should arrive in Talbot Street, secure it for me. My mother might open it, and although she does not comprehend German, yet there might be more of it understood than I should like. I know your reflections very well at this moment, but you are in the wrong. As the song says,

But wait a week and you shall hear it all orally.”

Spencer evidently came promptly to the aid of the traveller, for the same month of March found him once more in his native land.

It is stated by Dr Fitzpatrick in the later editions of his ‘Life of Charles Lever’ that the novelist obtained in 1824 an appointment as medical officer in charge of an emigrant ship bound from New Boss to Quebec. In 1824 Lever would have been only in his eighteenth year, and he would not have been in possession of any medical degree, nor would his brief experience as a student of the healing art have entitled him to undertake the medical charge of a passenger ship. Moreover, in a letter quoted by Dr Fitzpatrick, Lever speaks of spending the summer of 1829 in Canada, and there is no suggestion that he made two voyages to America. It may be safely asserted that the date of the American voyage was not 1824; and in all probability 1829 was the year of the Hegira.*

Lever appears to have embarked from New Ross in a vessel belonging to Messrs Pope of Waterford. A cousin of Lever, Mr Harry Innes, declares that it was through his good offices the young medical student succeeded in obtaining “the appointment, such as it was.” Lever abandoned the ship upon her arrival in the St Lawrence. He does not speak of this voyage in any of his autobiographical writings, except that he tells us in a preface to ‘Con Cregan’—a novel in which certain quarters of Quebec are intimately and graphically described—that once upon a time he “endured a small shipwreck” on the island of Anticosti. To his friend Canon Hayman he wrote (in June 1843) that the Canadian incidents in ‘Arthur O’Leary’ were largely personal experiences. He narrated to the canon an account of his landing in the New World, and of his rapid passage from civilised districts to the haunts of the red man. He was eager to taste the wild freedom of life with an Indian tribe. Lever, according to himself, found no difficulty in being admitted to Red-Indian fellowship, and for a time the unrestrained life of the prairie was a delightful and exhilarating experience. The nights in the open air, the days spent in the pine-forests or on the banks of some majestic river, were transcendently happy. He was endowed by the sachem with “tribal privileges,” and he identified himself as far as possible with his newly-made friends. Ere long, however, he grew weary of the latitudinarianism and of the ingloriousness of barbaric life, and he began to sigh for the flesh-pots of the city. He contrived to hide his feelings from the noble red man, but a noble red woman shrewdly guessed that the pale-face was weary, discontented, home-sick. This woman warned the young “medicine man” that if he made any overt attempt to seek his own people he would be followed, and one of his tribal privileges would be to suffer death by the tomahawk. Lever dissembled, and (somewhat after the manner of the as yet uncreated Mrs Micawber) he asseverated that he would never desert the clan.

But his moodiness grew apace and his health gave way. The perspicacious squaw, knowing the origin of his malady, feared that the pale-face would die from natural causes. Moved by compassion, she planned, at the risk of her own life and reputation, the escape of the interesting young stranger. An Indian named Tahata—a kind of half-savage commercial traveller—visited the tribe at long intervals, bearing with him supplies of such necessaries as rum and tobacco. Swayed by the promise of a good round sum, Tahata agreed to do his best to smuggle Charles Lever back to the paths of civilisation. The pair, after many vicissitudes, reached Quebec one bright frosty morning in December. “I walked through the streets,” said Harry Lorrequer to Canon Hayman, “in moccasins and with head-feathers.” In Quebec he found a timber merchant with whom his father had business transactions, and this hospitable man recompensed the trusty Tahata, and made Lever his guest; and when the ex-Indian was newly “rigged out” the merchant paid his passage back to the old country.

Lever averred that his description in ‘Arthur O’Leary’ of the escape of Con O’Kelly was a faithful account of his own adventures “deep in Canadian woods.”