Corinne: Italy

In the year 1794, Oswald, Lord Nevil, a Scotch nobleman, left Edinburgh to pass the winter in Italy. He possessed a noble and handsome person, a fine mind, a great name, an independent fortune; but his health was impaired; and the physicians, fearing that his lungs were affected, prescribed the air of the south. He followed their advice, though with little interest in his own recovery, hoping, at least, to find some amusement in the varied objects he was about to behold. The heaviest of all afflictions, the loss of a father, was the cause of his malady. The remorse inspired by scrupulous delicacy still more embittered his regret, and haunted his imagination. Such sufferings we readily convince ourselves that we deserve, for violent griefs extend their influence even over the realms of conscience. At five-and-twenty he was tired of life; he judged the future by the past, and no longer relished the illusions of the heart. No one could be more devoted to the service of his friends; yet not even the good he effected gave him one sensation of pleasure. He constantly sacrificed his tastes to those of others; but this generosity alone, far from proving a total forgetfulness of self, may often be attributed to a degree of melancholy, which renders a man careless of his own doom. The indifferent considered this mood extremely graceful; but those who loved him felt that he employed himself for the happiness of others, like a man who hoped for none; and they almost repined at receiving felicity from one on whom they could never bestow it. His natural disposition was versatile, sensitive, and impassioned; uniting all the qualities which could excite himself or others; but misfortune and repentance had rendered him timid, and he thought to disarm, by exacting nothing from fate. He trusted to find, in a firm adherence to his duties, and a renouncement of all enjoyments, a security against the sorrows which had distracted him. Nothing in the world seemed worth the risk of these pangs; but while we are still capable of feeling them, to what kind of life can we fly for shelter?

Lord Nevil flattered himself that he should quit Scotland without regret, as he had remained there without pleasure; but the dangerous dreams of imaginative minds are not thus fulfilled; he was sensible of the ties which bound him to the scene of his miseries, the home of his father. There were rooms he could not approach without a shudder, and yet, when he had resolved to fly them, he felt more alone than ever. A barren dearth seized on his heart; he could no longer weep; no more recall those little local associations which had so deeply melted him; his recollections had less of life; they belonged not to the things that surrounded him. He did not think the less of those he mourned, but it became more difficult to conjure back their presence. Sometimes, too, he reproached himself for abandoning the place where his father had dwelt. "Who knows," would he sigh, "if the shades of the dead follow the objects of their affection? They may not be permitted to wander beyond the spots where their ashes repose! Perhaps, at this moment, is my father deploring my absence, powerless to recall me. Alas! may not a host of wild events have persuaded him that I have betrayed his tenderness, turned rebel to my country, to his will, and all that is sacred on earth?"