E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) CORSE DE LEON: Or, The Brigand. A Romance. by G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. Author of "The Robber," "The Gentleman of the Old School," etc. In Two Volumes. VOL. I. New-York: Published by Harper & Brothers, No. 82 Cliff-Street. 1841. CORSE DE LEON; OR, THE BRIGAND. CHAPTER I. There are a thousand small and apparently accidental circumstances, which, in our course through life, bring a temporary gloom upon us, render our expectations from the future fearful and cheerless, and diminish our confidence in all those things whereon man either rashly relies or builds his reasonable trusts. Strength, youth, wealth, power, the consciousness of rectitude, the providence of God: all these will occasionally lose their sustaining influence, even upon the most hopeful mind, from causes too slight to justify such an effect. These accidental circumstances, these mental clouds, resemble much those other clouds which sometimes, at the close of a bright day, come over a landscape previously warm and shining, cast a gray shade over its rich hues, shut out the redoubled glory of the setting sun, and make gloom and shadow spread over the summer scene. Though nothing is changed but the light in which things dwell, though the colour of the tree and the form of the rock are the same, yet the brightness of the whole is departed, and the lustre gone out as if for ever. There are times, however, when a gloom, which seems to have no counterpart in the physical world, comes over the mind; when all has gone fairly with us; when every object around is full of brightness and hope; when the horses of Fortune's car have never once even stumbled on the way; and not a sorrow rough enough to rub the down from the wing of a butterfly has fallen upon our hearts for years; and yet a deep and shadowy despondence steals over our spirits, as if the immortal within us were telling the mortal of anxieties, and griefs, and dangers approaching--discovered by the fine sympathies of the higher part of our being with things undiscovered by the mere material creature.