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. 67
seldom spared a thought from his own temporal concerns,
to a future state and a governing Deity. All those expansions of soul produced by meditation on the power
and goodness of our Maker, and those raptures that flow
from accommodating all our actions to his will, and from
consciousness of his approbation and presence, you discovered to be strangers to his breast, and therefore you
scrupled to unite your fate with his.
It was not enough that this man had never been seduced into disbelief; that his faith was steadfast and
rational without producing those fervours, and reveries,
anclrhapsodies, which unfit us for the mixed scenes of
human life, and breed in us absurd and fantastic notions
of our duty or our happiness; that his religion had produced all its practical effects, in honest, regular, sober,
and consistent conduct.
You wanted a zealot; a sectary; one that should enter
into all the trifling distinctions and minute subtleties that
make one Christian the mortal foe of another, while, in
their social conduct, there is no difference to be found
between them.
I do not repeat these things to upbraid you for what
you then were, but merely to remind you of the inconsistency of these notions with your subsequent conduct.
You then, at the instance of your father and at my instance, gave them up; and that compliance, supposing
your scruples to have been undissembled, gave you a still
greater interest in our affections.
You never gave me reason to suppose that you repented of this compliance. I never saw you after your
engagement, but you wore a cheerful countenance; at
least till your unfortunate connection with Colden. To
that connection must be traced every misfortune and
depravity that has attended you since.
When I heard, from Patty Sinclair, of his frequent
visits to you during your retirement at Burlington, I
thought of it but little. He was, indeed, a new acquaintance. You were unacquainted with his character and
history, except so far as you could collect them from his
conversation; and no confidence could, of course, be
placed in that. It was therefore, perhaps, somewhat