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.

54

CLARA HOWARD; OR,

information might only be delayed; and imagined a thousand plausible reasons which might induce her to postpone
intelligence so unexpected, if not disagreeable, to me.
Next morning I repaired to the city, and to Mrs. Valentine's house. I inquired of a female servant for Miss
Wilmot, but was told that she had been there, a few hours,
on the preceding Thursday, and had then gone, in company with her mistress and Mr. Sedley, to New York.
No time had been fixed for their return, but Mrs. Valentine had said that her absence might last for six or eight
months. The steward, who might afford me more information, was out of town.
Thus my conjectures were confirmed; and having no
reason 'for further delay, I immediately set out in the
same road. My thoughts disembarrassed fiom all engagements with Mary, persuaded of her union with Sedley, and convinced that this union would more promote
her happiness than any other event, I returned without
reluctance to Clara Howard. I was impatient to compare those vague and glittering conceptions which hovered
in my fancy, with the truth; therefore adopted the swiftest conveyance, and arrived, in the evening of the same
day, at Powles's I-ook ferry.
My excursions had hitherto been short and rare, and
the stage on which I was now entering abounded with
novelty and grandeur. The second city in our country
was familiar to my fancy by description; but my ideas
were disjointed and crude, and my attention was busy in
searching, in the objects that presented themselves, for
similitudes which were seldom to be met with. A sort of
tremulous but pleasing astonishment overwhelmed me,
while I gazed, through the twilight, on the river and the
city on the farther shore. My sensations of solemn and
glowing expectation chiefly flowed from the foresight of
the circumstances in which I was preparing to place
myself.
Men exist more for the future than the present. Our
being is never so intense and vivid, if I may so speak, as
when we are on the eve of some anticipated revolution,
momentous to our happiness. Our attention is attracted
by every incident that brings us nearer to the change, and