Just because I was almost 62, I did not feel decrepit and felt I wasn't finished being a soldier yet.

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.