There cannot be any better cross-section of America and I think the soldiers represent the best we have. Today's soldiers are brighter and smarter, perhaps in a different way, than past generations because they've been brought up in the computer and information age.

He went to London in 1823 and became a reporter for one of the daily papers and later turned to writing fiction. I (London: 1843). One of his most famous works is The Collegians a novel based on a trial he had reported on that of John Scanlan a Protestant Anglo-Irish man who murdered Ellen Hanley a young Catholic Irish girl.