possible to say whether
I love, admire, or fear him the most. His success in life and in war, his
habit of making every obstacle yield before the energy of his exertions,
even where they seemed insurmountable--all these have given a hasty and
peremptory cast to his character, which can neither endure contradiction
nor make allowance for deficiencies. Then he is himself so very
accomplished. Do you know, there was a murmur, half confirmed too by some
mysterious words which dropped from my poor mother, that he possesses
other sciences, now lost to the world, which enable the possessor to
summon up before him the dark and shadowy forms of future events! Does
not the very idea of such a power, or even of the high talent and
commanding intellect which the world may mistake for it,--does it not,
dear Matilda, throw a mysterious grandeur about its possessor? You will
call this romantic; but consider I was born in the land of talisman and
spell, and my childhood lulled by tales which you can only enjoy through
the gauzy frippery of a French translation. O, Matilda, I wish you could
have seen the dusky visages of my Indian attendants, bending in earnest
devotion round the magic narrative, that flowed, half poetry, half prose,
from the lips of the tale-teller! No wonder that European fiction sounds
cold and meagre, after the wonderful effects which I have seen the
romances of the East produce upon their hearers.'

SECOND EXTRACT

'You are possessed, my dear Matilda, of my bosom-secret, in those
sentiments with which I regard Brown. I will not say his memory; I am
convinced he lives, and is faithful. His addresses to me were
countenanced by my deceased parent, imprudently countenanced perhaps,
considering the prejudices of my father in favour of birth and rank. But
I, then almost a girl, could not be expected surely to be wiser than her
under whose charge nature had placed me. My father, constantly engaged in
military duty, I saw but at rare intervals, and was taught to look up to
him with more awe than confidence. Would to Heaven it had been otherwise!
It might have been better for us all at this day!'

THIRD EXTRACT

'You ask me why I do not make known to my father that Brown yet lives, at
least that he survived the wound he received in that unhappy duel, and
had written to my mother expressing his entire convalescence, and his
hope of speedily escaping from captivity. A soldier, that "in the trade
of war has oft slain men,"