Corinne, Volume 1 | Page 8

to solicit any favour at her hands.
He expected to find in a strict attachment to all his duties, and in a
renunciation of every lively enjoyment, a security against those pangs
that tear the soul. What he had experienced struck fear into his heart;
and nothing this world can afford, could, in his estimation, compensate

the risk of those sufferings; but when one is capable of feeling them,
what mode of life can shelter us from their power?
Lord Nelville flattered himself that he should be able to quit Scotland
without regret, since he resided in it without pleasure; but the unhappy
imagination of the children of sensibility is not so formed: he did not
suspect what ties attached him to those scenes which were most painful
to him,--to the home of his father. There were in this habitation,
chambers, places, which he could not approach without shuddering,
and, nevertheless, when he resolved to quit them, he felt himself still
more solitary. His heart became dried up; he was no longer able to give
vent to his sufferings in tears; he could no longer call up those little
local circumstances which affected him deeply; his recollections no
longer possessed anything of the vivid semblance of real existence;
they were no longer in affinity with the objects that surrounded him; he
did not think less on him whose loss he lamented, but he found it more
difficult to recall his presence.
Sometimes also he reproached himself for abandoning those abodes
where his father had dwelt. "Who knows," said he to himself, "whether
the shades of the departed are allowed to pursue every where the
objects of their affection? Perhaps it is only permitted them to wander
about the spot where their ashes repose! Perhaps at this moment my
father regrets me, while distance prevents my hearing his voice exerted
to recall his son. Alas! while he was living must not a concourse of
strange events have persuaded him that I had betrayed his tenderness,
that I was a rebel to my country, to his paternal will, to everything that
is sacred on earth?"--These recollections excited in Lord Nelville a
grief so insupportable that not only was he unable to confide it to others,
but even dreaded himself to sound it to the bottom. So easily do our
own reflections become to us an irreparable evil.
It costs us more to quit our native country when to leave it we must
traverse the sea; all is solemn in a journey of which ocean marks the
first steps. An abyss seems to open behind you, and to render your
return for ever impossible. Besides, the sublime spectacle which the sea
presents must always make a deep impression on the imagination; it is

the image of that Infinity which continually attracts our thoughts, that
run incessantly to lose themselves in it. Oswald, supporting himself on
the helm, his eyes fixed on the waves, was apparently calm, for his
pride, united to his timidity, would scarcely ever permit him to discover,
even to his friends, what he felt; but he was internally racked with the
most painful emotions.
He brought to mind the time when the sight of the sea animated his
youth with the desire of plunging into her waves, and measuring his
force against her's.--"Why," said he to himself, with the most bitter
regret, "why do I yield so unremittingly to reflection? How many
pleasures are there in active life, in those exercises which make us feel
the energy of existence? Death itself then appears but an event, perhaps
glorious, at least sudden, and not preceded by decline. But that death
which comes without having been sought by courage, that death of
darkness which steals from you in the night all that you hold most dear,
which despises your lamentations, repulses your embrace, and pitilessly,
opposes to you the eternal laws of nature and of time! such a death
inspires a sort of contempt for human destiny, for the impotence of
grief, for all those vain efforts that dash and break themselves upon the
rock of necessity."
Such were the sentiments that tormented Oswald; and what particularly
characterised his unhappy situation, was the vivacity of youth united to
thoughts of another age. He entered into those ideas which he
conceived must have occupied his father's mind in the last moments of
his life; and he carried the ardour of twenty-five into the melancholy
reflections of old age. He was weary of every thing, and yet still
regretted happiness, as if her illusions were still within his grasp. This
contrast, quite in hostility with the ordinance of nature, which gives
uniformity and graduation to the natural course of things, threw the
soul of Oswald into disorder; but his manners always possessed
considerable sweetness and harmony,