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.

THE SECRET WITNESS.

39

were arrested by sounds from within. The staircase was
opposite the door. Two persons were now discovered
descending the stair. They lifted between them a heavy
mass, which was presently discerned to be a coffin.
Shocked by this discovery, and trembling, she withdrew
from the entrance.
At this moment a door on the opposite side of the street
opened and a female came out. Constantia approached
her involuntarily, and, her appearance not being unattractive, adventured, more by gestures than by words,
to inquire whose obsequies were thus unceremoniously
conducted. The woman informed her that the dead was
Mathews, who, two days before, was walking about, indifferent to and braving danger. She cut short the narrative, which her companion seemed willing to prolong
and to embellish with all its circumstances, and hastened
home with her utmost expedition.
The mind of Constantia was a stranger to pusillanimity. Death, as the common lot of all, was regarded
by her without perturbation. The value of life, though
not annihilated, was certainly diminished, by adversity.
With whatever solemnity contemplated, it excited on her
own account no aversion or inquietude. For her father's
sake only, death was an evil to be ardently deprecated.
The nature of the prevalent disease, the limits and modes of
its influence, the risk that is incurred by approaching the
sick or the dead, or by breathing the surrounding element,
were subjects foreign to her education. She judged like the
mass of mankind from the most obvious appearances, and
was subject, like them, to impulses which disdained the control of her reason. With all her complacency for death and
speculative resignation to the fate that governs the world,
disquiet and alarm pervaded her bosom on this occasion.
The deplorable state to which her father would be reduced by her death was seen and lamented; but her tremulous sensations flowed not from this source. They were,
in some sort, inexplicable and mechanical. In spite of
recollection and reflection, they bewildered and harassed
her, and subsided only of their own accord.
The death of Mathews was productive of one desirable
consequence. Till the present tumult were passed, and