“Gone is your glory, oh my country!” exclaimed the old man, in a more feeble voice; “your greatness among the nations is put down; your magnificence has dwindled to a heap of stones; your power has nothing by which it may be known. If the stranger come in a few years, and inquire for the city which was the wonder of the world, none shall tell him, for both city and citizens will have crumbled into dust. If he ask for the people whose name was a glory in every clime that exists, he shall find no better reply than the echo of his own voice. He may wander over the brave old island in search of places that history has made immortal, without being able to discover a trace of their existence. The thistle and the nettle will hide the graves of its illustrious; ravenous beasts will prowl in its cities; and all that is noble and grand in its localities will be crushed, swallowed, and lost in one devouring ruin; and I, that am here as an ancient tree with gnarled trunk and brittle boughs, that stands up as if unnoticed by the destroyer, when the rest of the forest have mouldered into the soil, will then have perished and passed away, and not even a remembrance of my name will be left upon the land.”
“Noble old man!” exclaimed Oriel Porphyry with fervour, “there is no one here who does not sympathise with your situation. I would endeavour to console you, but I am afraid that your case is one beyond all consolation. What can I do to render you assistance? Let me prevail on you to leave this land, which has been so completely devoted to destruction, and I will find you a more attractive home, and friends as kind as those you have lost.”
“Leave this land!” loudly cried the Englishman, apparently astonished at the suggestion. “For a hundred and twenty years this island has been the attraction of all my thoughts; my love for it arose from admiration of its magnificence, and my heart still clings to it in its utter annihilation. Do you think it would be possible for me, after having made myself so familiar with its ruins, to find pleasure in the prosperity of a far off country? No! to me the world hath nothing like it. What are smiling landscapes? What are stately edifices? What are fields busy with life, and cities astir with industry, if on a foreign shore? Its homes are not my home—its graves are not the graves of my people. But these tottering walls and depopulated lands are mine; I hold them in undisputed possession; I have a claim on them which has been long acknowledged; and they have a claim on me which I feel I must speedily prepare to liquidate. No: leave me to the desolation in which I dwell. It has become habitual—it has become necessary. I have long, perhaps too long, been its inhabitant; but the hour comes when another ruin must be added to those which now encumber the soil.”
“And then what is to become of the gentle Lilya?” inquired the young merchant.
“Ah! ’tis of that I am ever anxious,” replied the old man, with a look of affectionate solicitude towards his youthful relative. “The child is full of amiable ways—she is artless and untutored: I cannot part with her; and yet to leave her unprotected in this wilderness is a source of constant disquietude to me.”
“If you entrust her to me,” added Oriel, “by the honour of manhood I promise to behave to her as a brother; and I will place her under the protection of a lady from whom she will receive every attention her youth and unfriended situation requires.”
“In her name I can promise all that she stands most in need of,” said Zabra.
“What say you, my Lilya?” inquired the Englishman. “Will you go with the strangers? Will you leave this wretched country, and seek one where happiness awaits you?”
“I will have no other country but yours, oh my protector!” exclaimed the girl, as she flung herself into the old man’s arms. “These strangers are good; but they can never be so good as you have been: and these old walls too—where shall I meet with such verdant moss, or such beautiful ivy, as they possess? While you live, with you must my existence be passed: and when you have ceased to lead me in my wanderings through the silent forest or the deserted city, I care not where I go; for I shall never again find the parent, the friend and guardian I shall have lost.”
The Englishman pressed her more closely to his breast.