ABSTRACT
Travers listened to the whole of this proceeding with intense interest; his countenance and his gestures discovered in a variety of ways the perturbation of his mind, though he endeavoured by all the means in his power to control them. He regarded William, from every thing he had known of him, as of all men the most worthy to be loved, and the most unfortunate. He resolved that a lasting tomb should be erected to his memory, and that, as among the ancient Greeks, the blood of a human sacrifice should be spilled upon it. He considered himself as the being upon whom the care of fulfilling this to the minutest letter / was devolved. William had left no kindred, and, through his long absence from his country, had perhaps scarcely a friend in Great Britain. I had doubtless taken advantage of this circumstance, and had flattered myself (so Travers painted it to his thoughts), that I could remove an unwelcome intruder upon my enjoyments and my peace, and that no man would regard it. But it should be seen here, even as we read it in the Scriptures, that God should shew himself ‘able even from the stones of the earth to raise up’ an avenger. a Himself, from a distant quarter of the globe and another hemisphere, had been brought to the very spot for this special purpose, to teach me that the life of a man ten thousand times worthier than myself, should not be sacrificed with impunity to my causeless jealousy, and my fear even of the shadow of a rival. He had known all William’s unspeakable excellencies; he had studied them from day to day without ever / coming to an end of them, could read in that record and combination of high qualities for ever and for ever. William had delivered him from the jaws of the sea-monster, when in the act to devour him; and the life he had saved should now in this extremity be wholly consecrated to shew the sense Travers entertained of the benefit he had received. He would hunt me to the earth’s utmost verge: He would dwindle, peak and pine; Sleep should, neither night nor day, Hang upon his pent-house lid: b he would penetrate into every hiding place that could conceal me; ‘no place, though e’er so holy, should protect me: no shape that artful fear e’er formed 185should shield me’ a but I should suffer to the utmost letter the vengeance that the law has reserved for the most unspeakable of crimes.
