صفحة 109 من 483

I fear, my friend, that I shall render myself tedious by dwelling

on these preliminary circumstances; but they were days of

comparative happiness, and I think of them with pleasure. My

country, my beloved country! who but a native can tell the

delight I took in again beholding thy streams, thy mountains,

and, more than all, thy lovely lake!

Yet, as I drew nearer home, grief and fear again overcame me.

Night also closed around; and when I could hardly see the dark

mountains, I felt still more gloomily. The picture appeared a

vast and dim scene of evil, and I foresaw obscurely that I was

destined to become the most wretched of human beings. Alas! I

prophesied truly, and failed only in one single circumstance,

that in all the misery I imagined and dreaded, I did not conceive

the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure.