Corinne, Volume 1 | Page 8

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, and his sadness, far from souring his temper, only inspired him with more condescension and goodness towards others.
Two or three times during the passage from Harwich to Empden the sea put on the appearance of approaching storm; Lord Nelville counselled the sailors, restored confidence to the passengers, and when he himself assisted in