AFTER quitting the Flats we were to stay some days at madame’s, till we should make a circular visit, and take leave. Having lulled my disappointment with regard to Clarendon, and filled all my dreams with images of Clydesdale and Tweedale, and every other vale or dale that were the haunts of the pastoral muse in Scotland, I grew pretty well reconciled to my approaching journey, thinking I should meet piety and literature in every cottage, and poetry and music in every recess, among the sublime scenery of my native mountains. At any rate, I was sure I should hear the larks sing, and see the early primrose deck the woods, and daisies enamel the meadows; on all which privileges I had been taught to set the due value; yet I wondered very much how it was that I could enjoy nothing with such gay visions opening before me: my heart, I supposed, was honester than my imagination, for it refused to take pleasure in any thing, which was a state of mind so new to me that I could not understand it. Every where I was caressed, and none of these caresses gave me pleasure; at length the sad day came that I was to take the last farewell of my first best friend, who had often in vain urged my parents to leave me till they should decide whether to stay or return. About this they did not hesitate; nor, though they had, could I have divested myself of the desire now waked in my mind, of seeing once more my native land, which I merely loved upon trust, not having the faintest recollection of it. Madame embraced me tenderly with many tears, at parting; and I felt a kind of prelusive anguish, as if I had anticipated the sorrows that awaited: I do not mean now the painful vicissitudes of after life, but merely the cruel disappointment that I felt in finding the scenery and its inhabitants so different from the Elysian vales and Arcadian swains that I had imagined. When we came away, by an odd coincidence, aunt’s nephew Peter was just about to be married to a very fine young creature, whom his relations did not, for some reason that I do not remember, think suitable; while, at the very same time, her niece, Miss W. had captivated the son of a rich but avaricious man, who would not consent to his marrying her, unless aunt gave a fortune with her; which being an unusual demand, she did not choose to comply with. I was the proud and happy confidant of both these lovers; and before we left New-York we heard that each had married without waiting for the withheld consent. And thus for once madame was left without a protégée, but still she had her sister W., and soon acquired a new set of children, the orphan sons of her nephew, Cortlandt Schuyler, who continued under her care for the remainder of her life.