He had determined
to walk to London by the least public paths; meaning to see kind Mrs.
Robson, and bid her a grateful farewell before he should embark,
probably never to return, for America.
He had prepared his slender baggage before he sat down to write the
two letters which had cost him so many pangs; compressed within a
light black leather travelling-bag, he fastened it over his shoulders
by its buckled straps, in the manner of a soldier's knapsack. He then
put the memorandum-book which contained his "world's wealth," now to
be carefully husbanded, into a concealed pocket in the breast of his
waistcoat, feeling, while he pressed it down upon his heart, that his
mother's locket and Miss Beaufort's chain kept guard over it.
"Ah!" cried he, as he gently closed the low window by which he leaped
into the garden; "England, I leave thee forever, and within thee all
that on this earth had been left to me to love. Driven from thee!
Nay, driven as if I were another Cain, from the face of every spot of
earth that ever had been or would be dear to me! Oh, woe to them who
began the course. And thou, Austria, ungrateful leader in the
destruction of the country which more than once was thy preserver!--
could there be any marvel that the last of the Sobieskis should
perish with her? What accumulated sins must rest on thy head, thou
seducer of other nations into the spoliation and dismemberment of the
long-proved bulwark of Christendom? Assuredly, every hasty sigh that
rebels in the breasts of Poland's outcast sons against the mystery of
her doom will plead against thee at the judgment-seat of Heaven!"
He went on at a rapid pace through several fields, his heart and soul
full of those remembrances, and the direful echoes to them he had met
in England.
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