The opposition, indeed, held out terms to him which could not be refused; for they not only practised upon his proneness to think things wrong, but upon his equally strong proneness to believe that he was born to set them right. He caught at this, and in a little time was admitted into their councils. But though his station, his attainments, and his integrity, entitled him to a place in those councils, in other respects he soon found himself less qualified than he had supposed. Some of the leaders played double; others went farther than he intended to go with them; and some entered the opposition merely to enhance their price with the government. As he was sincere in his wish to act up to his principle, he complied with the demands of his party to give them his voice as well as his vote; and for this in many things he was excellently qualified. For he had a very noble air, and a manner not either less interesting or less commanding from its being tinged with melancholy. His voice was both sweet and sonorous, his language polished, and his taste classical. Perhaps it was too much so; for he sometimes failed from the mere circumstance of being too anxious not to do so. He was in fact too easily disgusted with himself, as well as with others; and was frequently not a little piqued at seeing a coarse, and even a vulgar orator succeed in arresting the attention of the house, in consequence of the total indifference he felt as to whether he succeeded or not. It was under these circumstances, in connexion with others of a similar nature, which need not be particularized, that Tremaine had long meditated a retreat from public life. We will not, however, say that this measure would have been so soon adopted as it was, but for some peculiar mortifications and disappointments, both to his feelings and his principles, which his ill fate had destined him still to undergo. It has been said indeed, by some, that about this time he suffered new disappointments in another "affair of the heart;" by others that he was the disappointer, and that he had used a young lady of rank-what is called ill. Of this, perhaps, more hereafter. As to the fact, it is certain, that though his heart was a sufferer, and a cruel one, it was in a manner and with a party far different from what is usually understood when an affair of the heart is mentioned; for the disappointment was with one of his own sex, and politics and friendship, not love, sustained the wound. In a word, one of the leaders of his party, a man not only of the highest rank and attainments, but of a nature seemingly, and perhaps really, so amiable and sincere, that to enjoy his confidence, and be distinguished by his friendship, was the pride and honour of Tremaine's life,-this man failed him. It was in one of those negociations for an arrangement of the government, which the highest power in the state fondly thought might reconcile, all jarring interests, and heal the wounds of his distracted country, that a blow was given to Tremaine's best feelings, which finally sickened and disgusted him with public life. What is worse, it turned even his private friendship into bitterness, and made him renounce his confidence in man, as before he had renounced it in woman.. And yet, so great had been his love for this man, that he almost shed tears on discovering (as he did within a week of professions which went to the bottom of Tremaine's heart) that he had misrepre sented him to the Regent, undervalued his weight and services, and coolly appropriated to an upstart flatterer that which he had actually promised to the independent Tremaine. 1 Let not the reader misunderstand. These were not sordid feelings. Tremaine's grief was not occasioned by the loss of a prospect of office, the emoluments of which were as nothing to him. But his heart loved the man who had deceived him. Had he been the victim of a common-place character (as indeed he was of the intrigue of a subaltern time-serving parasite), he could have laughed at the paltry excuses that were made in answer to his just remonstrances on this ill treatment. But, as we have observed, he had loved the injurer, for many real virtues, for long-tried honour in the world, and long-tried friendship towards himself; and when he found that even such a man had failed and forgotten him, it went to his very heart. At first, he thought he had fallen into some error concerning him, or at best that he was merely capricious; and, being open and confiding himself, he sought explanations, which he thought would instantly restore things to their old level. But he was shocked to find that the man he had so loved took refuge from his advances in coldness; and the few explanations he condescended to make were of a nature so frivolous, so bordering, indeed, upon equivocation, that something very like indignation and haughty reproach on Tremaine's part marked their separation. The feeling was not diminished by seeing this person fall immediately under the government of the upstart above-mentioned, who had wound about his naturally honourable mind, by a train of the most obsequious flattery, to which, it need not be observed, Tremaine neither would nor could condescend. The result was, that he almost pitied while he renounced him; and though, we repeat, he might have been disposed to laugh at a person less richly endowed than the one in question, yet, when he reflected on who had deceived him, he "Wept to think that Atticus was he." In the end, the negociation for power which produced this separation failed, and the deceiving parties were themselves disappointed. But Tremaine never forgot their treatment; and from that hour, as has been said, to effect a retreat from a world in which he seemed to have been betrayed both by man and woman, became his favourite wish. CHAP. IX. HE RESOLVES TO RETIRE. "This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, SHAKSPEARE. TREMAINE'S wish for retirement was not a little fostered by the course of his former reading, and, as far as he could understand himself, by the inclination of his taste. He had been bred a scholar. Homer, Horace, Virgil, and Theocritus were familiar |
