Page:The Castle of Wolfenbach - Parsons - 1854.djvu/276

 when they looked to see this hope, the solace of many a cruel moment, realized. The tender fears of a mother would not suffer Matilda to risk the chief of her last remaining comforts. She forbade Osbert to engage. He submitted in silence, and endeavoured by application to his favourite studies, to stifle the emotions which roused him to arms. He excelled in the various accomplishments of his rank, but chiefly in the martial exercises, for they were congenial to the nobility of his soul, and he had a secret pleasure in believing, that they would one time assist him to do justice to the memory of his dead father, His warm imagination directed him to poetry, and he followed where she led. He loved to wander the romantic scenes of the Highlands, where the wild variety of nature inspired him with all the enthusiasm of his favourite art. He delighted in the terrible and in the grand, more than in the softer landscape; and wrapt in the bright visions of fancy, would often lose himself in awful solitudes.

It was in one of these rambles, that having strayed for some miles over hills covered with heath, from whence the eye was presented with only the bold outlines of uncultivated nature, rocks piled on rocks, cataracts and vast moors unmarked by the foot of tavellerstravellers [sic], he lost the path which he had himself made; he looked in vain for the objects which had directed him, and his heart, for the first time, felt the repulse of fear. No vestige of a human being was to be seen, and the dreadful silence of the place was interrupted only by the roar of distant torrents, and by the screams of the birds which flew over his head. He shouted, and his voice was answered only by deep echoes from the mountains. He remained for some time in a silent dread not wholly unpleasing, but which was soon heightened to a degree of terror not to be endured; and he turned his steps backward, folorn, and almost without hope. His memory gave him back no image of the past; and having wandered some time, he came to a narrow pass, which