child
I accompanied them to England: I remained with them for three years,
and I still consider those days among the whitest in my restless and
agitated career. I returned to Spain; I became engaged in the troubles
and dissensions which distracted my unhappy country. Years rolled on,
how I need not mention to you. One night they put a letter into my
hands; it was from my sister; it was written on her death-bed. Her
husband had died suddenly. She loved him as a Spanish woman loves, and
she could not survive his loss. Her letter to me spoke of her country
and her son. Amid the new ties she had formed in England, she had never
forgotten the land of her fathers. "I have already," she said, "taught
my boy to remember that he has two countries; that the one, prosperous
and free; may afford him his pleasures; that the other, struggling and
debased, demands from him his duties. If, when he has attained the age
in which you can judge of his character, he is respectable only from
his rank, and valuable only from his wealth; if neither his head nor
his heart will make him useful to our cause, suffer him to remain
undisturbed in his prosperity _here_: but if, as I presage, he becomes
worthy of the blood which he bears in his veins, then I conjure you, my
brother, to remind him that he has been sworn by me on my death-bed to
the most sacred of earthly altars."

Some months since, when I arrived in England; before I ventured to find
him out in person, I resolved to inquire into his character. Had he been
as the young and the rich generally are--had dissipation become habitual
to him, and frivolity grown around him as a second nature, then I
should have acquiesced in the former injunction of my sister much more
willingly than I shall now obey the latter. I find that he is perfectly
acquainted with our language, that he has placed a large sum in our
funds, and that from the general liberality of his sentiments he is as
likely to espouse, as (in that case) he would be certain, from his high
reputation for talent, to serve our cause. I am, therefore, upon the eve
of seeking him out. I understand that he is living in perfect retirement
in the county of -------, in the immediate neighbourhood of Mr.
Mandeville, an Englishman of considerable fortune, and warmly attached
to our cause.

Mr. Mandeville has invited me to accompany him down to his estate for
some days, and I am too anxious to see my nephew not to accept eagerly
of the invitat