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."