His civic honours were quickly succeeded by his mother's death. Two years after that event, he married the beautiful daughter of Sir Hedworth Athelstone. But his lot was not to be found in a domestic circle. His young baroness died in the first year of his nuptials; and he relinquished his only child to the prayers of its maternal grandfather. Thus, separated from every object that might have had a near claim upon his heart, Ripperda gave up his soul to the commonwealth. He travelled throughout Europe, to study the characters and politics of its rulers, in the seats of their governments; and he returned with an extent of information which rendered his judgement on general policy, almost omniscient. His influence too, was not less far-reaching; for he never forgot the gracious courtesies of life, in the stern pursuits of the statesman.--In him was mingled a strange, but imposing union; the republican independence of a citizen of Holland, with the chivalric gallantry and feudal grandeur which distinguish the grandee of Spain.--His house was a palace; his retinue superb; and his table open every day to the first men in the States, and to all noble strangers who visited the country. His thoughts, his time, his fortune, all were dedicated to the Republic:--but he would bestow that all according to his own humour. Not by a covert, silent, channel; but openly, bounteously, magnificently; as he thought became him who made the dedication, and the great people by which it was accepted. With this profusion, he was no prodigal. His estates in Groningen and the adjacent provinces, were immense; but they were not his only means. His expansive genius had grasped the various resources of commerce; and the treasures which poured into him from every point of the compass, rendered his expenditure exhaustless. Thus absorbed in a wide-spreading vortex of public duties, which seemed by each successive movement to separate his thoughts still farther from domestic recollections, it is not surprising that he almost ceased to remember he was a father. Indeed the image of his absent son never presented itself, but when occasional letters arrived from Mr. Athelstone; and then the thought once or twice occurred to him to have Louis to Holland. The next public dispatch dissipated the idea; and it never crossed him again, till some other letter recalled the wish--to be as speedily forgotten. Meanwhile, the great events of Europe were operating an unlooked for change in the destiny of Baron de Ripperda.