"They wish now to try in the Islands for a few thousand dollars on the ensuing Loan. If you can serve them, perhaps you will, (in the way of information, at any rate,) and I will see that you have fair play; but still I do not _advise_ you, except to act as you please. Almost every thing depends upon the arrival, and the speedy arrival, of a portion of the Loan to keep peace among themselves. If they can but have sense to do this, I think that they will be a match and better for any force that can be brought against them for the present. We are all doing as well as we can." It will be perceived from these letters, that besides the great and general interests of the cause, which were in themselves sufficient to absorb all his thoughts, he was also met on every side, in the details of his duty, by every possible variety of obstruction and distraction that rapacity, turbulence, and treachery could throw in his way. Such vexations, too, as would have been trying to the most robust health, here fell upon a frame already marked out for death; nor can we help feeling, while we contemplate this last scene of his life, that, much as there is in it to admire, to wonder at, and glory in, there is also much that awakens sad and most distressful thoughts. In a situation more than any other calling for sympathy and care, we see him cast among strangers and mercenaries, without either nurse or friend;--the self-collectedness of woman being, as we shall find, wanting for the former office, and the youth and inexperience of Count Gamba unfitting him wholly for the other. The very firmness with which a position so lone and disheartening was sustained, serves, by interesting us more deeply in the man, to increase our sympathy, till we almost forget admiration in pity, and half regret that he should have been great at such a cost. The only circumstances that had for some time occurred to give him pleasure were, as regarded public affairs, the news of the successful progress of the Loan, and, in his personal relations, some favourable intelligence which he had received, after a long interruption of communication, respecting his sister and daughter. The former, he learned, had been seriously indisposed at the very time of his own fit, but had now entirely recovered. While delighted at this news, he could not help, at the same time, remarking, with his usual tendency to such superstitious feelings, how strange and striking was the coincidence.