CHAPTER XIV.

"And now I'm in the world alone,
Upon the wide, wide sea;

But why should I for others groan,
When none will sigh for me?"

"My native land, good night!"

BYRON.

To those disposed to sympathise with the poet-lord of England in the affected, aristocratic satiety of life which he thought it becoming to exhibit on first leaving his country, a change of feeling may be counselled, Contempt for the gloomy childe, rather than contempt for life, will be inspired by a morning's walk on the principal pier at Liverpool,

when the wind is fair for going out and when some hundreds of vessels are taking advantage of it. There, indeed, are to be seen many who might justly lift up their voices and wail because cast out from home, to be alone on the wide, wide sea.

There is the young sailor lad making his first voyage. As the ship bears him away, his eye turns to a form on the pier-his mother's-the child swells in his heart, it throbs, he is weak for a moment-only for a moment-the fear of offending is courage to him he looks steadily from one to another of the crew, and turns no more to land. He has become a little of the man already. But who would not regret all that the boy has lost in that first sacrifice of his tenderness?

Who does not pity him in having thus to learn what loneliness is?

There is the thoughtful labourer or mechanic who has had experience of hard times. When they became good again, wishing not a second such experience, he hoarded a little

sum to carry him from a country so capricious in its bounties. Far away in some inland town he has left his relatives; yet, in his journey to the great sea-port he scarcely knew that he was solitary-it is only now, when the vessel has glided away into the river, that he knows it. He had never thought of expressing love for England, who harsh in her love to him had often refused him bread.

The classic word patriotism had no significance to him-yet, how is this? No mother's, sister's, sweetheart's form attaches his eyes to the shore, still they are fixed on it, and he passes his hand across them as if to wipe a tear. It is so. Not driven to fortitude by timidity like the boy, he cares not to hide the workings of feelings only then revealed to himself and, when one of the seamen smiles, his simple, "I did not think I'd have minded leaving old England," has more pathos in it than the measured farewell of the poet.

There is the young supercargo repressing every regret that rises in his bosom; eager not only to shew that he is interested, but to be interested in the business which he has undertaken. He has heard "wise saws and modern instances," about the difficulty of putting a young man forward at home, and how fortunate any one is in having such a chance as his. He has heard all this ad nauseam, as one may say-but no!-not yet he has not yet been tossed up and down on the waves of the channel, he is still in the river, still believes honestly that he is a favoured mortal. Standing alone, gazing at the long lines of piers which seem moving away from him, he wonders at this something which tugs at his heart -but there is no poetry in him yet-only with sea-sickness comes Byron's conviction, "that he is a weed flung from the rock on ocean's foam," the conviction that he is, in truth, alone.

There is the junior partner of some rising

house going abroad to establish a branch of it. Anxious and absorbed, for the business is his own, he has not to seem interested in what he has undertaken. He is less aware how solitary he is than almost any other new voyager. His brain is full of plans and schemes. In "the conversation of his thoughts,” he finds, at first, companionship. But during the tedious interval which crossing the Atlantic will place between his designs and the fulfilment of them, he shall learn how much he is alone.

"Then bending o'er the vessel's heaving side,

The soul forgets her schemes of hope and pride, And flies unconscious o'er each backward year."

Ah! all that made those backward years dear, is at that time of solitude so far away! Will the fortune which he is to make in the coming years be better than the all he has left?

Had the question been put to Benjamin Hardy just then, he would boldly have re