The rippling of the waves upon the pebbly margin
where we were seated filled up the pauses of the song with a milder
and not more monotonous music. The night was very dark, but by the
flashes of the fires we caught a glimpse of the woods, the rocks, and
the lake, which, together with the wild appearance of the dancers,
presented us with a scene that would have made a fine picture in the
hands of such an artist as the author of the Mysteries of Udolpho."
Having traversed Acarnania, the travellers passed to the AEtolian side
of the Achelous, and on the 21st of November reached Missolonghi. And
here, it is impossible not to pause, and send a mournful thought
forward to the visit which, fifteen years after, he paid to this same
spot, when, in the full meridian both of his age and fame, he came to
lay down his life as the champion of that land, through which he now
wandered a stripling and a stranger. Could some spirit have here
revealed to him the events of that interval,--have shown him, on the
one side, the triumphs that awaited him, the power his varied genius
would acquire over all hearts, alike to elevate or depress, to darken
or illuminate them,--and then place, on the other side, all the
penalties of this gift, the waste and wear of the heart through the
imagination, the havoc of that perpetual fire within, which, while it
dazzles others, consumes the possessor,--the invidiousness of such an
elevation in the eyes of mankind, and the revenge they take on him who
compels them to look up to it,--_would_ he, it may be asked, have
welcomed glory on such conditions? would he not rather have felt that
the purchase was too costly, and that such warfare with an ungrateful
world, while living, would be ill recompensed even by the immortality
it might award him afterwards?
At Missolonghi he dismissed his whole band of Albanians, with the
exception of one, named Dervish, whom he took into his service, and
who, with Basilius, the attendant allotted him by Ali Pacha, continued
with him during the remainder of his stay in the East.
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