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. 169
cate. A man of more refineament and address than I can
pretend to would make this communication in a more circuitous and artful manner; and a man less deeply interested in the establishment of truth would act with more
caution and forbearance. I have no excuse to plead, no
forgiveness to ask, for what I am now going to disclose.
I demand nothing from you but your patient attention
while I lay before you the motives of my present visit.
I"You are no stranger to my attachment to Mrs. Talbot. That my passion is requited is likewise known to
you. That her mother objects to her union with me, and
raises her objections on certain improprieties in my character and conduct, I suppose, has already come to your
knowledge.
"You may naturally suppose that I am desirous of
gaining her favour; but it is not by the practice of fraud
and iniquity, and therefore I have not begun with denying
or concealing my faults. Very faulty, very criminal,
have I been; to deny that would be adding to the number
of my transgressions: but I assure you, Miss Jessup,
there have been limits to my follies; there is a boundary
beyond which I have never gone. Mrs. Fielder imagines
me much more criminal than I really am, and her opinion
of me —which, if limited in the strictest manner by my
merits, would amply justify her aversion to my marriage
with her daughter-is, however, carried further than justice allows.' "Mrs. Fielder has been somewhat deceived with regard
to me. She thinks me capable of a guilt of which, vicious
as I am, I am yet incapable. Nay, she imagines I have
actually committed a crime of which I am wholly innocent.
"What think you, madam," (taking her hand, and eyeing her with steadfastness;) "she thinks me at once so
artful and so wicked that I have made the wife unfaithful
to the husband; that I have persuaded Mrs. Talbot to
forget what was due to herself, her fame, and to trample
on her marriage-vow.
"This opinion is not a vague conjecture on suspicion.
It is founded in what seems to be the most infallible of
all evidence; the written confession of her daughter. The
paper appears to be a letter which was addressed to
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