some pangs of natural regret; after his marriage with Ellinor he returned
abroad for some time, but finally settling in England, engaged in active
life, and left to his posterity a name they still honour; and to his
country, the memory of some services that will not lightly pass away."

But one dread and gloomy remembrance never forsook his mind, and
exercised the most powerful influence over the actions and motives of his
life. In every emergency, in every temptation, there rose to his eyes the
fate of him so gifted, so noble in much, so formed for greatness in all
things, blasted by one crime--self-sought, but self-denied; a crime, the
offspring of bewildered reasonings--all the while speculating upon
virtue. And that fate revealing the darker secrets of our kind, in which
the true science of morals in chiefly found, taught him the twofold
lesson, caution for himself, and charity for others. He knew henceforth
that even the criminal is not all evil; the angel within us is not easily
expelled; it survives sin, ay, and many sins, and leaves us sometimes in
amaze and marvel, at the good that lingers round the heart even of the
hardiest offender.

And Ellinor clung with more than revived affection to one with whose lot
she was now allied. Walter was her last tie upon earth, and in him she
learnt, day by day, more lavishly to treasure up her heart. Adversity and
trial had ennobled the character of both; and she who had so long seen in
her cousin all she could love, beheld now in her husband that greater and
more enduring spell--all that she could venerate and admire. A certain
religious fervour, in which, after the calamities of her family, she had
indulged, continued with her to the last; but, (softened by human ties,
and the reciprocation of earthly duties and affections,) it was
fortunately preserved either from the undue enthusiasm or the undue
austerity into which it would otherwise, in all likelihood, have merged.