never met with. During the whole day he would scarcely bestow a single
moment upon himself: influenced alike by melancholy and benevolence, he
gave his whole time to others. On leaving him the sailors said to him
with one voice, "My dear Lord, may you be more happy!" Oswald had not
once expressed the internal pain he felt; and the men of another rank,
who had accompanied him in his passage, had not spoken a word to him on
that subject. But the common people, in whom their superiors rarely
confide, accustom themselves to discover sentiments and feelings by
other means than speech: they pity you when you suffer, though they are
ignorant of the cause of your grief, and their spontaneous pity is
unmixed with either blame or advice.




Chapter ii.


Travelling, whatever may be said of it, is one of the saddest pleasures
of life. When you find yourself comfortable in some foreign city it
begins to feel, in some degree, like your own country; but to traverse
unknown realms, to hear a language spoken which you hardly comprehend,
to see human countenances which have no connection either with your past
recollections or future prospects, is solitude and isolation, without
dignity and without repose; for that eagerness, that haste to arrive
where nobody expects us, that agitation, of which curiosity is the only
cause, inspires us with very little esteem for ourselves, till the
moment when new objects become a little old, and create around us some
soft ties of sentiment and habit.