There she was exceedingly well-educated, became an elegant and very pleasing young woman, and was happily and most respectably married before I left the country, as was her brother very soon after. They are still living; and Peter, adhering to what might be called eventually the safer side during the war with the mother country, succeeded undisturbed to his uncle’s inheritance. All these new cares and sorrows did not in the least abate the hospitality, the popularity, or the public spirit of these truly great minds. Their dwelling, though in some measure become a house of mourning, was still the rendezvous of the wise and worthy, the refuge of the stranger, and an academy for deep and sound thinking, taste, intelligence, and moral beauty. There the plans for the public good were digested by the rulers of the province, who came, under the pretext of a summer excursion for mere amusement. There the operations of the army, and the treaties of peace or alliance with various nations, were arranged; for there the legislators of the state, and the leaders of the war, were received, and mixed serious and important counsels with convivial cheerfulness, and domestic ease and familiarity. It is not to be conceived how essential a point of union, a barrier against license, and a focus, in which the rays of intellect and intelligence were concentrated, (such as in this family,) were to unite the jarring elements of which the community was composed, and to suggest to those who had power without experience, the means of mingling in due proportions its various materials for the public utility. Still, though the details of family happiness were abridged, the spirit that produced it continued to exist, and to find new objects of interest. A mind, elevated by the consciousness of its own powers, and enlarged by the habitual exercise of them, for the great purpose of promoting the good of others, yields to the pressure of calamity, but sinks not under it, particularly when habituated, like these exalted characters, to look through the long vista of futurity, towards the final accomplishment of the designs of providence. Like a diligent gardener, who, when his promising young plants are blasted in full strength and beauty, though he feels extremely for their loss, does not sit down in idle chagrin, but redoubles his efforts to train up their successors to the same degree of excellence. Considering the large family she (madame) always had about her, of which she was the guiding star as well as the informing soul, and the innocent cheerfulness which she encouraged and enjoyed; considering, too, the number of interesting guests whom she received, and that complete union of minds, which made her enter so intimately into all the colonel’s pursuits, it may be wondered how she found time for solid and improved reading; because people whose time is so much occupied in business and society, are apt to relax with amusing