Great Britain in 1833 (Volume 2)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833 edition. Excerpt: ... 265 PHILOSOPHY OF EXILE. For two years and upwards, to escape a political condemnation, I have dwelt in England. What have I seen there? What have I done there? How have I there spent my time, my money? What is left me instead? Such are the questions which I put to myself on the second anniversary of my arrival in a country to which I had brought great uneasiness, painful recollections, an uncertain future, and prejudices which ill prepared me to be pleased with it. A storm in which, unfortunate pilot as I was--call me unskilful if you choose--the vessel committed in part to my charge, had perished, threw me upon its shores. I solicited of them an asylum VOL. II. N which, from choice, I should have sought elsewhere. Prudence, counselled me to submit with a good grace to what to me was an imperative necessity, and to banish as useless discouraging thoughts, the comparison of my past condition and my present lot, of my native land and the land of exile, of what I had been and what I was about to be; in short, to do in adversity what I had done in more favourable circumstances--obtain from my situation all that it could yield of honour, of consideration, and of pleasure. Regrets, hesitation to enter upon the position to which I was doomed, ill-humour with its inconveniences, resistance to its demands--these would have been the only results that would have accrued to me from a contrary resolution. It was more rational to put away whatever was of a nature to give me pain, to adapt my situation to my resources, to caress it, in order to render it the more complaisant, to employ my mind in such a manner as to leave the less room for care, to advance with eyes shut towards a future, which my will had not the power to modify, that I might not see all the...