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.

JANE TALBOT. 111
sweet a beam —when a blackc usurping,mist stole it away,
and all was dreary as it is wont to be.
Perhaps thy being in a house of mourning may account
for it. Fitful and versatile I know thee to be; changeable with scene and circumstance. Thy views are just
what any eloquent companion pleases to make them.
She thou lovest is thy deity; her lips thy oracle. And
hence my cheerful omens of the future; the confidence
I have in the wholesome efficacy of my government. I,
that have the will to make thee happy, have the power
too. I know I have; and hence my promptitude to give
away all for thy sake; to give myself a wife's title to
thy company, a conjugal share in thy concerns, and
claim to reign over thee.
Make haste, and atone, by the future brightness of
thy epistolary emanations, for the pitchy cloud that overspreads these sick man's dreams.
IH-ow must thou have rummaged the cupboard of thy
fancy for musty scraps and flinty crusts to feed thy spleen
withal,-inattentive to the dainties which a blue-eyed
Hebe had culled in the garden of Ilope, and had poured
from out her basket into thy ungrateful lap.
While thou wast mumbling these refractory and unsavoury bits, I was banqueting on the rosy and delicious
products of that Eden which love, when not scared away
by evil omens, is always sure (the poet says) to plant
around us. I have tasted nectarines of her raising,
and I find her, let me tell thee, an admirable hoirtieulturist.
Thou art so far off, there is no sending thee a basketful, or I would do it. They would wilt and wither ere
they reached thee; the atmosphere thou breathest would
strike a deadly worm into their hearts before thou couldst
get them to thy lips.
But to drop the basket and the bough, and take
up a plain meaning:-I will tell thee 1how I was employed when thy letter came; but first I must go back
a little.
In the autumn of ninety-seven, and when death had
spent his shafts in my own family, I went to see how a
family fared, the father and husband of which kept a