ROMANCE IN HIGH LIFE.

Otago Witness, Issue 537, 15 March 1862, Page 3

ROMANCE IN HIGH LIFE.

(From the Otago Daily Times.) Wk recently under this heading related one of those strange tales which so aptly illustrate the quotation " truth is strange, stranger far than fiction," in which the hero 'was aFrenchman.We have now a parallel in a stranger tale, the hero of which ia an English, or rather an Irish noblennn. The Frenchman was only partly aware of the high place in which his lot was cast, he rose to a respectable position in the staff of the New 7ealarid army commissariat undreaming of the exalted station he was destined to occupy, or of the Autograph Letter of Louis Napoleon that was following him round the world to invite him to take the place of his deceased uncle, a nobleman of France, and a friend of the Emperor. But our English hero knows who he ih, and is supposed to he not unaware of the title to which the Black Horses have cleared him the way. Leaving the trammels of civilised life, and scorning the attraction of the dolce far ttiente of a Government clerkship in England, the Honourable Paget O'Grady, younger brother of Viscount Guillamore, landed some live years back in Victoria, with the roving intention of enjoying existence in its wild primitive state. We have no record of his earlier movements, beyond that the aristocratic prefix was dropt, and the scarcely less aristocratic first name Paget was changed into Patrick, whilst the O of the surname was allowed to lapse ; so that the noble young patrician was transformed into the plebeian Patrick, or Pat Grady. Digging, stockriding, bullock-driving, and timber-splitting, have been the various occupations which the young nobleman has set himself. Ik followed them despite the entreaties of his friends who desired him to return to his family,— followed them not through want or destitution, for out of an nUowance at his command, he has only the whole time drawn £50. The iast heard of him, he was at the farfamed Lambing Flat diggings. Meanwhile, his elder brother died, and Patrick or Pat Grudy became the head and last ' t urriving male representative of "the time honored house" of Guillamore, and a peer of the realm. The bulk of the Estates, however, passed to his brother's daughter, but a respectable competence was left to him. For two years he has been urgently searched after by friends in the colony at the instigation of his family at home. It is believed to be impossible that he is ignorant of his elder brother's death and of his own accession to the title. A reward of one hundred pounds is offered for any" information leading to the discovery of his whereabouts. His ascertained almost to a certainty that he came to Otago from Lambing Flat, and he is believed to be on the diggings. It may be that owing to one circumstance or another he may be ignorant of that of which it is believed he is well aware, his brother's death, but if so this intimation can scarcely fail to reach him if he be within the Province of Otago. It; on the other hand, he is aware of his altered position, and this information ull upon the stern-hearted man determined to forswear family ties and other obligations that men are wont to hold as sacred, if we say, these line? fjnd hjm in such a mood, it may not he all unavailing to appeal to the sympathies of his better nature. We know not if his obstinate and strange silence be the consequence of mere eccentricity, or if he has reason, or fancies he has reason, to forswear the claims of kindred, home, and native land. We desire not to pry into family secrets, but he should recollect that circumstances have strangely altered. Whatever may have been the reasons that induced him to leave his country, whatever the cause that has urged him to his since strange life, if those circumstances, if that cause had aught to do with family matters, his position in regard to his family is strangely altered. No longer a younger brother, he is now the head of his house, the last male representative of a race ' that can. count its honors some centuries back. Is it fit that he should forget the obligations his position entails, and leading a wandering vagrant life, expose to all kiacw' of risks the

lasfr descendant pf his liouse— the. last , inheritor of his title. And if even these con-siderations-fail to arrest his erratic fancy, there is ono at home,'his sole surviving parent, who anxiously' longs again to greet her long absent aim.- If eaSe/if competence, if distinguished position, and the rtameless refinements of cultivated society have no i attraction for him, let him not ut least he'insensible to the memory ot the mother, who mourns the absence of her son and prays ioi his return. In another column appears' an official notification of the reward we have alluded to "from this and other sources 1 we have gathered our information.