He was, notwithstanding, of a nature susceptible of emotion, sensibility and passion; he combined every thing that could evoke enthusiasm in others and in himself; but misfortune and repentance had taught him to tremble at that destiny whose anger he sought to disarm by forbearing 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.