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.

26

ORMOND; OR,

she was affected by the first symptoms of this depravity,
the struggles which she made to counteract this dreadful
infatuation, and the grief which she experienced fiom
the repeated miscarriage of her efforts. I will not detail
her various expedients for this end, the appeals which
she made to his understanding, to his sense of honour
and dread of infamy, to the gratitude to which she was
entitled, and to the injunctions of parental duty. I will
not detail his fits of remorse, his fruitless penitence and
continual relapses, nor depict the heart-breaking scenes
of uproar and violence and foul disgrace that accompanied his paroxysms of drunkenness.
The only intellectual amusement which this lady allowed herself was writing. She enjoyed one distant
friend, with whom she maintained an uninterrupted correspondence, and to whom she confided a circumstantial
and copious relation of all these particulars. That friend
is the writer of these memoirs. It is not impossible but
that these letters may be communicated to the world at
some future period. The picture which they exhibit is
hourly exemplified and realized, though, in the manycoloured scenes of human life, none surpasses it in disastrousness and horror. My eyes almost wept themselves
dry over this part of her tale.
In this state of things Mr. Dudley's blindness might
justly be accounted, even in its immediate effects, a fortunate event. It dissolved the spell by which he was
bound, and which, it is probable, would never have been
otherwise broken. It restored him to himself, and showed
him, with a distinctness which made him shudder, the
gulf to which he was hastening. But nothing can compensate to the sufferer the evils of blindness. It was the
business of Constantia's life to alleviate those sufferings, to
cherish and console her father, and to rescue him, by the
labour of her hands, from dependence on public charity.
For this end, her industry and solicitude were never at
rest. She was able, by that industry, to provide him
and herself with necessaries. Their portion was scanty,
and, if it sometimes exceeded the standard of their wants,
not less frequently fell short of it. For all her toils and
disquietudes she esteemed herself fully compensated by