“Above all other admonition on my part,” he said, “cherish and follow this one:  do not despair.  That is the most dangerous gulph on which you perpetually totter; but you must reassure your steps, and take hope to guide you.[74] Hope, and your wounds will be already half healed:  but if you obstinately despair, there never more will be comfort for you.  Believe me, my dearest friend, that there is a joy that the sun and earth and all its beauties can bestow that you will one day feel.  The refreshing bliss of Love will again visit your heart, and undo the spell that binds you to woe, untill you wonder how your eyes could be closed in the long night that burthens you.  I dare not hope that I have inspired you with sufficient interest that the thought of me, and the affection that I shall ever bear you, will soften your melancholy and decrease the bitterness of your tears.  But if my friendship can make you look on life with less disgust, beware how you injure it with suspicion.  Love is a delicate sprite[75] and easily hurt by rough jealousy.  Guard, I entreat you, a firm persuasion of my sincerity in the inmost recesses of your heart out of the reach of the casual winds that may disturb its surface.  Your temper is made unequal by suffering, and the tenor of your mind is, I fear, sometimes shaken by unworthy causes; but let your confidence in my sympathy and love be deeper far, and incapable of being reached by these agitations that come and go, and if they touch not your affections leave you uninjured.”

These were some of Woodville’s last lessons.  I wept as I listened to him; and after we had taken an affectionate farewell, I followed him far with my eyes until they saw the last of my earthly comforter.  I had insisted on accompanying him across the heath towards the town where he dwelt:  the sun was yet high when he left me, and I turned my steps towards my cottage.  It was at the latter end of the month of September when the nights have become chill.  But the weather was serene, and as I walked on I fell into no unpleasing reveries.  I thought of Woodville with gratitude and kindness and did not, I know not why, regret his departure with any bitterness.  It seemed that after one great shock all other change was trivial to me; and I walked on wondering when the time would come when we should all four, my dearest father restored to me, meet in some sweet Paradise[.] I pictured to myself a lovely river such as that on whose banks Dante describes Mathilda gathering flowers, which ever flows

             ——­bruna, bruna,
    Sotto l’ombra perpetua, che mai
    Raggiar non lascia sole ivi, ne Luna.[76]