Page:The Monk, A Romance - Lewis (1796, 1st ed., Volume 1).djvu/99

 alone in the universe: the love of society revives in his bosom, and he pants to return to that world which he has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: no one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some rock, he gazes upon the tumbling water-fall with a vacant eye; he views, without emotion, the glory of the setting sun. Slowly he returns to his cell at evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; he has no comfort in his solitary, unsavoury meal: he throws himself upon his couch of moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former."

"You amaze me, father! Suppose that circumstances condemned you to solitude; would not the duties of religion, and the consciousness of a life well spent, communicate to your heart that calm which"

"I should deceive myself, did I fancy that they could. I am convinced of the