Riperdá, Juan Guillermo, Duke of, 1680-1737 -- Fiction; Wharton, Philip Wharton, Duke of, 1698-1731 -- Fiction
Louis saw it would be vain to reason with this violence; and that all
he could do, was to take a grateful and steady leave of his uncle.
Sir Anthony clung to him, mingling entreaties for his stay, with
upbraidings for his departure. And amidst vows of entailing all on
him, if he would remain; and oaths, to cut him off with a shilling, if
he persisted to go, Louis tore himself away; leaving his uncle in an
agony of grief and exasperation in the arms of his servants.
Distressed by the outrageous emotions of Sir Anthony; so different
from the chastised feelings of the Pastor, whose profound affections
smoothed by their fulness the rising sorrow of the parting moment;
Louis found a refuge, though a dreary one, in the solitude of his
cabin. He sat for some hours, alone and silent, in the encreasing
gloom. The evening-gun fired from the fort at the mouth of the harbour;
and in a few minutes Castanos appeared with a lamp. He set it on the
table, and silently threw himself into the birth appropriated to his
use. Louis was not in a mood to desire companionship; and with little
more than a gracious word or two of thanks to the civilities of the
captain and his mate, as they stepped in at intervals to enquire how he
fared, he passed the remainder of the night.
Next morning at dawn, when he pressed his repeater and counted the
hour, he calculated that if the breeze had continued, his vessel must
now be far from the coast; and fearing to lose a last look of the
shore where he first remembered consciousness of being, and where he
had imbibed, from friends dear to his heart, all the valued impulses
of his soul; he sprang from the cot on which he lay, and stepped upon
deck. The lonely helmsman was at his post, gazing at the stars, and
steering, slowly to leeward.--To windward, stretched darkly along the
horizon, lay the embattled cliffs of Northumberland.
"Majestic England!" said he, as he turned towards them; "How do thy
lofty rocks declare thy noble nature! There, liberty has stationed her
throne; there, virtue builds her altar; and there peace has planted her
groves! I leave thee, to prove myself worthy of being thy adopted son.
I go far away, to send a good report to the dear friends slumbering
behind thy promontories. England, beloved, honoured! Where shall I
find a country like thee? Will gorgeous Spain be to me what thy simple
glades have been?" He smiled at his own soliloquy.
"I go not to luxurious groves, and gorgeous indolence," cried he, "my
errand is to the arena of populous cities; to win, or lose myself, in
the Olympian struggles of man with man."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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