I have said
that I had looked upon the country around me, during the hurried
and dissipated period of my life, with the eyes, indeed, of my
body, but without those of my understanding. It was piece by
piece, as a child picks out its lesson, that I began to recollect
the beauties of nature which had once surrounded me in the home
of my forefathers. A natural taste for them must have lurked at
the bottom of my heart, which awakened when I was in foreign
countries, and becoming by degrees a favourite passion, gradually
turned its eyes inwards, and ransacked the neglected stores which
my memory had involuntarily recorded, and, when excited, exerted
herself to collect and to complete.
I began now to regret more bitterly than ever the having fooled
away my family property, the care and improvement of which I saw
might have afforded an agreeable employment for my leisure, which
only went to brood on past misfortunes, and increase useless
repining. "Had but a single farm been reserved, however small,"
said I one day to Mr. Fairscribe, "I should have had a place I
could call my home, and something that I could call business.
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