By stopping here we had the misfortune to lose our excursion, a loss
that was soothed by no know ledge of its destination or hope of
seeing it again, and a loss without a hope is nearly always painful.
Going out of the harbor we encounter Pictou Island and Light, and
presently see the low coast of Prince Edward Island,--a coast
indented and agreeable to those idly sailing along it, in weather
that seemed let down out of heaven and over a sea that sparkled but
still slept in a summer quiet. When fate puts a man in such a
position and relieves him of all responsibility, with a book and a
good comrade, and liberty to make sarcastic remarks upon his
fellow-travelers, or to doze, or to look over the tranquil sea, he may
be pronounced happy. And I believe that my companion, except in the
matter of the comrade, was happy. But I could not resist a worrying
anxiety about the future of the British Provinces, which not even the
remembrance of their hostility to us during our mortal strife with the
Rebellion could render agreeable. For I could not but feel that the
ostentatious and unconcealable prosperity of "the States" over-shadows
this part of the continent. And it was for once in vain that I said,
"Have we not a common land and a common literature, and no copyright,
and a common pride in Shakespeare and Hannah More and Colonel Newcome
and Pepys's Diary?" I never knew this sort of consolation to fail
before; it does not seem to answer in the Provinces as well as it does
in England.
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