ght. An awe, the sweetest and most solemn that
imagination can conceive, pervaded my whole frame. It forsook me not
when I parted from Pleyel and retired to my chamber. An impulse was
given to my spirits utterly incompatible with sleep. I passed the night
wakeful and full of meditation. I was impressed with the belief of
mysterious, but not of malignant agency. Hitherto nothing had occurred
to persuade me that this airy minister was busy to evil rather than to
good purposes. On the contrary, the idea of superior virtue had always
been associated in my mind with that of superior power. The warnings
that had thus been heard appeared to have been prompted by beneficent
intentions. My brother had been hindered by this voice from ascending
the hill. He was told that danger lurked in his path, and his obedience
to the intimation had perhaps saved him from a destiny similar to that
of my father.

Pleyel had been rescued from tormenting uncertainty, and from the
hazards and fatigues of a fruitless voyage, by the same interposition.
It had assured him of the death of his Theresa.

This woman was then dead. A confirmation of the tidings, if true, would
speedily arrive. Was this confirmation to be deprecated or desired?
By her death, the tie that attached him to Europe, was taken away.
Henceforward every motive would combine to retain him in his native
country, and we were rescued from the deep regrets that would accompany
his hopeless absence from us. Propitious was the spirit that imparted
these tidings. Propitious he would perhaps have been, if he had been
instrumental in producing, as well as in communicating the tidings of
her death. Propitious to us, the friends of Pleyel, to whom has thereby
been secured the enjoyment of his society; and not unpropitious to
himself; for though this object of his love be snatched away, is there
not another who is able and willing to console him for her loss?

Twenty days after this, another vessel arrived from the same port. In
this interval, Pleyel, for the most part, estranged himself from his old
companions. He was become the prey of a gloomy and unsociable grief.
His walks were limited to the bank of the Delaware. This bank is an
artificial one. Reeds and the river are on one side, and a watery marsh
on the other, in that part which bounded his lands, and which extended
from the mouth of Hollander's creek to that of Schuylkill. No scene can
be imagined less enticing to a lover of the p