Charles Brockden Brown

“ Frequently he attempted to speak, but seemed deterred by some degree of uncertainty as to the true nature of the scene. At length, in faltering accents he spoke:
"My friend! would to heaven I were still permitted to call you by that name. The image that I once adored existed only in my fancy; but though I cannot hope to see it realized, you may not be totally insensible to the horrors of that gulf into which you are about to plunge. What heart is forever exempt from the goadings of compunction and the influx of laudable propensities? ”

“ She was greatly charmed with the humanity that shone forth in his conversation and behaviour. From that time to this all intercourse had ceased. She was acquainted with the place of his abode, and knew him to be affluent. To him she determined to apply as a suppliant in behalf of her father. She did not inform Mr. Dudley of this intention, conceiving it best to wait till the event had been ascertained, for fear of exciting fallacious expectations. She was further deterred by the apprehension of awakening his pride, and bringing on herself an absolute prohibition. ”

“ For Brackenridge see A Bibliography of H. H. Brackenridge (Heartman, New York: 1917) by Charles F. Heartman. Modern Chivalry has long been out of print, as have A Pretty Story, The Foresters, The Coquette, The Algerine Captive, Female Quixotism, The Asylum, etc. An edition of Charlotte Temple (Funk and Wagnalls: 1905) contains an introduction and a bibliography by F. W. Halsey. Charles Brockden Brown's novels were issued in six volumes by Mackay (Philadelphia) in 1887. The Life of Charles Brockden Brown (Philadelphia: 1815: 2 vols.) ”

“ He surveyed me, for a considerable time, and listened to my interrogations in silence. At length he spoke: "Clara, I have known thee by report, and in some degree by observation. Thou art a being of no vulgar sort. Thy friends have hitherto treated thee as a child. They meant well, but, perhaps, they were unacquainted with thy strength. I assure myself that nothing will surpass thy fortitude.
"Thou art anxious to know the destroyer of thy family, his actions, and his motives. ”

“ Did you entertain any imagination of so frightful a catastrophe? I am overwhelmed by turns with dismay and with wonder. I am prompted by turns to tear my heart from my breast and deny faith to the verdict of my senses.
Was it I that hurried to the deed? No. It was the demon that possessed me. My limbs were guided to the bloody office by a power foreign and superior to mine. I had been defrauded, for a moment, of the empire of my muscles. A little moment for that sufficed. If my destruction had not been decreed, why was the image of Clarice so long excluded? Yet why do I say long? ”

“ I repeat, that I perfectly rely on the rectitude of your judgement. Summon all your sagacity and disinterestedness and choose for me. You know in what light Helena has been viewed by me. I have ceased to view her in this light. She has become an object of indifference. Nay, I am not certain that I do not hate her,—not indeed for her own sake, but because I love another. Shall I marry her whom I hate, when there exists one whom I love with unconquerable ardour?"
Constantia was thunderstruck with this intelligence. ”

“ I approached it, and, looking through, beheld a plain but neat apartment, in which parlour, kitchen, and nursery seemed to be united. A fire burned cheerfully in the chimney, over which was a tea-kettle. On the hearth sat a smiling and playful cherub of a boy, tossing something to a black girl who sat opposite, and whose innocent and regular features wanted only a different hue to make them beautiful. Near it, in a rocking-chair, with a sleeping babe in her lap, sat a female figure in plain but neat and becoming attire. ”

“ By what degrading standard do you measure my enjoyments! "In my mother's tenderness and gratitude; in the affluence and honour which her regard will secure to me," am I to find consolation for unfaithfulness to my engagements; for every evil that may befall you. You, whom every hallowed obligation, every principle of human nature, has placed next to myself; whom it has become not a fickle inclination, but a sacred duty, to prefer to all others; whose happiness ought to be my first and chief care, and from whose side I cannot sever myself without a guilt inexpiable! ”

“ Indeed, time only could decide whether these footsteps tended to this, or to some other, apartment.
My doubts were quickly dispelled. The door opened, and a figure glided in. The portmanteau dropped from my arms, and my heart's blood was chilled. If an apparition of the dead were possible, (and that possibility I could not deny,) this was such an apparition. A hue, yellowish and livid; bones, uncovered with flesh; eyes, ghastly, hollow, woe-begone, and fixed in an agony of wonder upon me; and locks, matted and negligent, constituted the image which I now beheld. ”

“ Fielder? and shall I find that misery compensated by the happiness of her daughter? What pure and unmingled joy will the daughter taste, while conscious of having destroyed the peace, and perhaps hastened the end, of one who, with regard to her, has always deserved and always possessed a gratitude and veneration without bounds? And for whom is the tranquillity and affection of the mother to be sacrificed? For me,--a poor, unworthy wretch; deservedly despised by every strenuous and upright mind; a fickle, inconsiderate, frail mortal, whose perverse habits no magic can dissolve. ”

“ Such a union is the direst cruelty even to the object who is intended to be benefited.
I have not yet thoroughly forgiven you for deserting me. My heart swells with anguish at the thought of your setting more lightly by my resentment than by that of another; of your willingness to purchase any one's happiness at the cost of mine. You are too wise, too dispassionate, by far. Don't despise me for this accusation, Henry; you know my unbiassed judgment has always been with you. Repeated proofs have convinced me that my dignity and happiness are safer in your keeping than in my own. ”

“ Nothing but pure felicity to me can flow from it. Nothing but gratitude and honour can redound from it to yourself.
I go; but not with anguish and despondency for my companions. I am buoyed up by the light wings of hope. The prospect of gaining your love is not the only source of my present happiness. If it were, I should be a criminal and selfish being. No. My chief delight is, that happiness is yet in store for you; that, should Heaven have denied you your first hope, there still lives one whose claim to make you happy will not be rejected. ”

“ You, Clithero, know the wishes that I once cherished: I had hoped that my son would have found, in this darling child, an object worthy of his choice, and that my girl would have preferred him to all others; but I have long since discovered that this could not be—they are nowise suited to each other. There is one thing, in the next place, desirable, and now my wishes are accomplished: I see that you love each other; and never, in my opinion, was a passion more rational and just: I should think myself the worst of beings if I did not contribute all in my power to your happiness. ”

“ But what now is the change that time and passion have wrought! I have found a man without religion. What I supposed impossible has happened. I love the man. I cannot give him up. The mist that is before my eyes does not change what was once vice into virtue. I do not cease to regard unbelief as the blackest stain, as the most deplorable calamity that can befall a human creature; but still I love the man, and that fills me with unconquerable zeal to rescue him from this calamity. ”

“ I am very often on the brink of hating myself. So much thoughtlessness of others; such callousness to sorrows not my own: my hard heart has often reproached thee for sparing a sigh or a wish from me; that every gloom has not been dispelled by my presence, was treason, forsooth, against my majesty, and the murmurs that delighted love should breathe, to welcome thy return, were changed into half-vindictive reluctance,--not quite a frown,--and upbraidings, in which tenderness was almost turned out of door by anger. ”

“ Should I not be the most fragrant of villains if I deserted one that loved me? My own happiness is not a question. I cannot be a selfish being and a true lover. Happiness, without her, is indeed a chimerical thought; but my exile would be far from miserable, while assured of her tranquillity, and possession would confer no peace, if she whom I possessed were not happier than a different destiny would make her.
Why have all these thoughts been suspended for the last two days? I had wrought myself up to a firm persuasion that marriage was the only remedy for all evils ”

“ Fears for my own safety again yielded place to reflections on the scene before me. I fixed my eyes upon her countenance. My sister's well-known and beloved features could not be concealed by convulsion or lividness. What direful illusion led thee hither? Bereft of thee, what hold on happiness remains to thy offspring and thy spouse? To lose thee by a common fate would have been sufficiently hard; but thus suddenly to perish—to become the prey of this ghastly death! How will a spectacle like this be endured by Wieland? To die beneath his grasp would not satisfy thy enemy. ”

“ Of what stuff must that heart be made which can behold, unmoved, genius and worth, destitute of the joys and energies of religion; wandering in a maze of passions and doubts; devoured by fantastic repinings and vague regrets; drearily conscious of wanting a foundation whereon to repose, a guide in whom to trust? What heart can gaze at such a spectacle without unspeakable compassion?
Not to have our pity and our zeal awakened seems to me to argue the utmost depravity of heart. No stronger proof can be given that we ourselves are destitute of true religion. ”

“ He describes him in general terms, as the most incomprehensible and formidable among men; as engaged in schemes, reasonably suspected to be, in the highest degree, criminal, but such as no human intelligence is able to unravel: that his ends are pursued by means which leave it in doubt whether he be not in league with some infernal spirit: that his crimes have hitherto been perpetrated with the aid of some unknown but desperate accomplices: that he wages a perpetual war against the happiness of mankind, and sets his engines of destruction at work against every object that presents itself. ”

“ Thy state is to the last degree forlorn, even marriage is denied thee. Thou wast contented to take me without it,—to dispense with the name of wife; but the being who has displaced thy image in thy heart is of a different class. She will be to me a wife, or nothing; and I must be her husband, or perish.
"Do not deceive thyself, Helena. I know what it is in which thou hast placed thy felicity. Life is worth retaining by thee but on one condition. I know the incurableness of thy infirmity; but be not deceived. Thy happiness is ravished from thee. ”

“ Why not terminate at once this series of horrors?—Hurry to the verge of the precipice, and cast myself for ever beyond remembrance and beyond hope?
Still I live: with this load upon my breast; with this phantom to pursue my steps; with adders lodged in my bosom, and stinging me to madness: still I consent to live!
Yes, I will rise above the sphere of mortal passions: I will spurn at the cowardly remorse that bids me seek impunity in silence, or comfort in forgetfulness. My nerves shall be new strung to the task. Have I not resolved? I will die. ”

“ Why did I linger on the verge? Why, thus perilously situated, did I not throw myself headlong? The steel was yet in my hand. A single blow would have pierced my heart, and shut out from my remembrance and foresight the past and the future.
The moment of insanity had gone by, and I was once more myself. Instead of regarding the act which I had meditated as the dictate of compassion or of justice, it only added to the sum of my ingratitude, and gave wings to the whirlwind that was sent to bear me to perdition. ”

“ The persuasion that I have one friend is sweet. I fancy myself talking to one who is interested in my happiness; but this shall satisfy me. If fate impel me to any rash and irretrievable act, I will take care that no legacy of sorrow shall be left to my survivors. My fate shall be buried in oblivion. No busy curiosity, no affectionate zeal, shall trace the way that I have gone. ”

“ I am afraid to allow you too near a view of my heart at this moment of despondency. My present feelings are new even to myself. They terrify me. I must not trust myself longer alone. I must shake off, or try to shake off, this excruciating, this direful melancholy. Heavy, heavy is my soul; comfortless and friendless my condition. Nothing is sweet but the prospect of oblivion.
But, again I say, these thoughts must not lead me. Dreadful and downward is the course to which they point. I must relinquish the pen. I must sally forth into the fields. ”

“ When I reflected on that tissue of nice contingencies which led him to my door, and enabled me to save from death a being of such rare endowments, my heart overflowed with joy, not unmingled with regrets and trepidation. How many have been cut off by this disease, in their career of virtue and their blossom-time of genius! How many deeds of heroism and self-devotion are ravished from existence, and consigned to hopeless oblivion!
I had saved the life of this youth. This was not the limit of my duty or my power. Could I not render that life profitable to himself and to mankind? ”