It was six months after this miserable conclusion to his long nursed hopes that I first saw him.

He had retired to a part of the country where he was not known that he might peacefully indulge his grief.

All the world, by the death of his beloved Elinor, was changed to him, and he could no longer remain in any spot where he had seen her or where her image mingled with the most rapturous hopes had brightened all around with a light of joy which would now be transformed to a darkness blacker than midnight since she, the sun of his life, was set for ever.
He lived for some time never looking on the light of heaven but shrouding his eyes in a perpetual darkness far from all that could remind him of what he had been; but as time softened his grief[57] like a true child of Nature he sought in the enjoyment of her beauties for a consolation in his unhappiness.

He came to a part of the country where he was entirely unknown and where in the deepest solitude he could converse only with his own heart.

He found a relief to his impatient grief in the breezes of heaven and in the sound of waters and woods.