Page:Duty and Inclination 2.pdf/306

304 leisure for contemplation, and which often involved much languor, regret, and disappointment, and resolved to devote the rest of his days to the pursuits of literature; for to his intervals of melancholy, possessing genius, he was equally subject to the high and lofty flights of a vigorous fancy.

It was at this period that, of sketching plans for the future occupation of his time, upon his having withdrawn to a retired walk in Kensington Gardens, he beheld Rosilia. How warmly he become captivated we have already seen. Had his passion been crowned with success, he might possibly have arrived at that enviable summit of happiness his imagination had often pictured, but which, in his hours of depression, he had fatally foreboded never would be his.

After the accident his curricle had met with, leaving it in the hands of his servant to get repaired, the one sole idea preponderating over his mind was to fly the spot, to fly immediately from a place, where, did he remain, he might feel impelled to force himself a second time into the presence of her whom his prolific fancy had endowed with such transcendant and eminent attraction. To fly, where the sound could never reach his ears that Rosilia De Brooke had become the