 engagements were made.—One great objection, then, to his union with Celestina was thus removed; and never did her image more tenderly occupy his thoughts than at this moment: but, alas! it was no longer cherished with delight. The mystery that clouded her birth, and which he despaired of ever removing, empoisoned the pleasure with which he would have thought of her; and with yet greater bitterness, he adverted to the probability there was that she was now the wife of another.

Very certain that he should now never find that happiness of which her loss had deprived him, the lesser evils—evils from which, a few years before, he would have shrunk with dismay, seemed to have lost their effect.—It was almost impossible for him, without injustice to others and uneasiness to himself, to keep such a place as Alvestone, in the present shattered state of his fortune; and resolving to disembarrass himself from the necessity of returning to England, for some years, he wrote from Lyons, to Cathcart, giving him directions to put the estate to sale: and at the same time informed the banker, in whose hands Lord Castlenorth had left money for the discharge of all his incumbrances, that he should not avail himself of it; but that it must be replaced to his uncle's account.
Having thus loosened almost every tie that connected him with England, from which he did not wish even to hear, left the information of Celestina's marriage should reach him,
The World was all before him where to chuse;

and his utmost hope was, to obtain, by change of place, so much tranquillity of mind, as to allow him to feel some satisfaction in the variety of the scenes it offered.

He journeyed from Lyons to Avignon; and then proceeded along the coast, by Bezieres and Mirepoix, into Roussillon: interested by the grandeur and beauty of these remains of Roman antiquity which he saw in his way; still more charmed by the sublime views, which, in this romantic line of country, every where offered themselves to his sight; and hearing, and but hearing, at a distance, the tumults, with which a noble struggle for freedom at this time (the summer of 1789) agitated the capital, and many of the great towns of France, till, among the wild and stupendous scenes which he at length reached, even this faint murmur died away.
In one of the cottages scattered at the foot of Montlouis, he found a young mountaineer, acquainted with all the passes of the Pyrenees: he was there only for a few days,
