CHAPTER VII.

Oswald proceeded to Scotland. The effect of Lucy's presence, the sentiment he still felt for Corinne, alike gave place to the emotions that awakened at the sight of scenes where he had dwelt with his father. He upbraided himself with the dissipations in which he had spent the last year; fearing that he was no longer worthy to re-enter the abode he now wished he had never quitted. Alas! after the loss of life's dearest object, how can we be content with ourselves, unless in perfect retirement? We cannot mix in society, without in some way neglecting our worship of the dead. In vain their memory reigns in the heart's core; we lend ourselves to the activity of the living, which banishes the thought of death as painful and unavailing. If solitude prolongs not our regrets, life, as it is, calls back the most feeling minds, renews their interests, their passions. This imperious necessity is one of the sad conditions of human nature; and although decreed by Providence, that man may support the idea of death, both for himself and others, yet often, in the midst of our enjoyments, we feel remorse at being still capable of them, and seem to hear a resigned, affecting voice asking us: "Have you, whom I so loved, forgotten me?" Oswald felt not now the despair he had suffered on his first return home after his father's death, but a melancholy, deepened by his perceiving that time had accustomed every one else to the loss he still deplored. The servants no longer thought it their duty to speak of the late lord; his place in the rank of life was filled; children grow up as substitutes for their sires. Oswald shut himself in his father's room, for lonely meditation. "Oh, human destiny!" he sighed, "what wouldst thou have? so much life perish? so many thoughts expire? No, no, my only friend hears me, yet sees my tears, is present--our immortal spirits still commune. Oh, God! be thou my guide. Those iron souls, that seem immovable as nature's rocks, pity not the vacillations and repentance of the sensitive, the conscientious, who cannot take one step without the fear of straying from the right. They may bid duty lead them, but duty's self would vanish from their eyes, if _Thou_ revealedst not the truth to their hearts."

In the evening Oswald roved through the favorite walks of his father. Who has not hoped, in the ardor of his prayers, that the one dear shade would reappear, and miracles be wrought by the force of love? Vain trust! beyond the tomb we can see nothing. These endless uncertainties occupy not the vulgar, but the nobler the mind the more incontrollably is it involved in speculations. While Oswald wandered thus absorbed, he did, indeed, behold a venerable man slowly advancing towards him. Such a sight at such a time and place, took a strong effect; but he soon recognized his father's friend, Mr. Dickson, and with an affection which he never felt for him before.