The novels of Charles Brockden Brown, consisting of Wieland;or, The transformation. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the year 1793. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a sleep-walker. Jane Talbot. Ormond; or, The secret witness. Clara Howard; or, The enthusiasm of love. With a memoir of the author.

THE ENTHUSIASM OF LOVE.

75

LETTER XVIII.
To Clara Howard.
Philadelphia, May 5.
THOUGH I am so soon to be with you, and have received
no answer to my last, yet I cannot be alone in my chamber,
and be within reach of pen and paper, without snatching
them up and talking to my friend thus. This is a mode
of conversing I would willingly exchange for the more
lively and congenial intercourse of eyes and lips; but 'tis
better than total silence.
What are you doing now? Busy, I suppose, in turning
over the leaves of some book: some painter of manners or
of nature is before you; some dramatist, or poet, or historian, furnishes you with occupation. The day here is
celestially benign,-such only as our climate can know.
It is not less splendid and serene with you; so you have
strolled into that field which is not excelled for the grandeur of its scenery, the balsamic and reviving virtue of
its breezes, its commodiousness of situation for the purpose of relieving those condemned to a city-life, by any
field on this globe. The Battery!-what a preposterous
name! Yet not the only instance of a mound serving at
once the double purpose of pleasure and defence. Did you
not say the bulwarks of Paris were pleasure-walks? You
have been in Sicily and Provence: did you ever meet
with sun, sky, and water more magnificent, and air more
bland, than you are now contemplating and breathing?
for methinks I see that lovely form gliding along the
green, or fixed in musing posture at the rails and listening to the rippling of the waters.
Perhaps some duty keeps you at home. You expect
a visitant,-are seated at your toilet, adding all the enchantments of drapery, the brilliant hues and the flowing
train of muslin, to a form whose excellence it is to be beautiful when unadorned, and yet to gain from every ornament new beauty.
What a rare lot is yours, Clara! One of the most fortunate of woman art thou. Wealth, affluence, is yours: