The vacuity his heart endured of any deep interest in life during his long absence from his native country had had a singular effect upon his ideas.  There was a curious feeling of unreality attached by him to his foreign life in comparison with the years of his youth.  All the time he had passed out of England was as a dream, and all the interest of his soul[,] all his affections belonged to events which had happened and persons who had existed sixteen years before.  It was strange when you heard him talk to see how he passed over this lapse of time as a night of visions; while the remembrances of his youth standing seperate as they did from his after life had lost none of their vigour.  He talked of my Mother as if she had lived but a few weeks before; not that he expressed poignant grief, but his discription of her person, and his relation of all anecdotes connected with her was thus fervent and vivid.

In all this there was a strangeness that attracted and enchanted me.  He was, as it were, now awakened from his long, visionary sleep, and he felt some what like one of the seven sleepers, or like Nourjahad,[17] in that sweet imitation of an eastern tale:  Diana was gone; his friends were changed or dead, and now on his awakening I was all that he had to love on earth.

How dear to me were the waters, and mountains, and woods of Loch Lomond now that I had so beloved a companion for my rambles.  I visited with my father every delightful spot, either on the islands, or by the side of the tree-sheltered waterfalls; every shady path, or dingle entangled with underwood and fern.  My ideas were enlarged by his conversation.  I felt as if I were recreated and had about me all the freshness and life of a new being:  I was, as it were, transported since his arrival from a narrow spot of earth into a universe boundless to the imagination and the understanding.  My life had been before as a pleasing country rill, never destined to leave its native fields, but when its task was fulfilled quietly to be absorbed, and leave no trace.  Now it seemed to me to be as a various river flowing through a fertile and lovely lanscape, ever changing and ever beautiful.  Alas!  I knew not the desart it was about to reach; the rocks that would tear its waters, and the hideous scene that would be reflected in a more distorted manner in its waves.  Life was then brilliant; I began to learn to hope and what brings a more bitter despair to the heart than hope destroyed?

Is it not strange[18] that grief should quickly follow so divine a happiness?  I drank of an enchanted cup but gall was at the bottom of its long drawn sweetness.  My heart was full of deep affection, but it was calm from its very depth and fulness.  I had no idea that misery could arise from love, and this lesson that all at last must learn was taught me in a manner few are obliged to receive it.  I lament now, I must ever lament, those few short months of Paradisaical bliss; I disobeyed no command, I ate no apple, and yet I was ruthlessly driven from it.  Alas! my companion did, and I was precipitated in his fall.[19] But I wander from my relation—­let woe come at its appointed time; I may at this stage of my story still talk of happiness.