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sight. How exquisite was the cool breeze as it
swept across his cheek, loaded with fragrance!
He inhaled it as though it were the breath of continued
life. And there was a freshness in the
landscape; and in the rippling of the calm green
sea, that fell upon his withering heart like dew
upon the parched earth. How he gazed and panted,
and still clung to his hold! sometimes hanging
by one hand, sometimes by the other, and then
grasping the bars with both, as loath to quite the
smiling paradise outstretched before him; till exhausted,
and his hands swollen and benumbed, he
droped helpless down, and lay stunned for a considerable
time by the fall.
When he recovered, the glorious vision had
vanished. He was in darkness. He doubted
whether it was not a dream that had passed before
his sleeping fancy; but gradually his scattered
thoughts returned, and with them remembrance.
Yes ; he had looked once again upon the gorgeous
splendour of nature! Once again his eyes had
trembled beneath their veiled lids, at the sun’s
radiance, and sought repose in the soft verdure of
the olive tree, or the gentle swell of undulating
waves. Oh, that he were a mariner, exposed upon
the waves to the worst fury of storm and tempest;
or a very wretch, loathsome with disease, plague-stricken,
and his body one leprous contagion from
crown to sole, hunted forth to grasp out the
remnant of infectious life beneath those verdant
trees, so he might shun the destiny upon whose
edge he tottered!
Vain thoughts like these would steal over his
mind from time to time, in spite of himself; but
they scarcely moved it from that stupor into which
it had sunk, and which kept him, during the whole