When he was nineteen his mother died.  He left college on this event and shaking off for a while his old friends he retired to the neighbourhood of his Diana and received all his consolation from her sweet voice and dearer caresses.  This short seperation from his companions gave him courage to assert his independance.  He had a feeling that however they might express ridicule of his intended marriage they would not dare display it when it had taken place; therefore seeking the consent of his guardian which with some difficulty he obtained, and of the father of his mistress which was more easily given, without acquainting any one else of his intention, by the time he had attained his twentieth birthday he had become the husband of Diana.

He loved her with passion and her tenderness had a charm for him that would not permit him to think of aught but her.  He invited some of his college friends to see him but their frivolity disgusted him.  Diana had torn the veil which had before kept him in his boyhood:  he was become a man and he was surprised how he could ever have joined in the cant words and ideas of his fellow collegiates or how for a moment he had feared the censure of such as these.  He discarded his old friendships not from fickleness but because they were indeed unworthy of him.  Diana filled up all his heart:  he felt as if by his union with her he had received a new and better soul.  She was his monitress as he learned what were the true ends of life.  It was through her beloved lessons that he cast off his old pursuits and gradually formed himself to become one among his fellow men; a distinguished member of society, a Patriot; and an enlightened lover of truth and virtue.—­He loved her for her beauty and for her amiable disposition but he seemed to love her more for what he considered her superior wisdom.  They studied, they rode together; they were never seperate and seldom admitted a third to their society.

Thus my father, born in affluence, and always prosperous, clombe without the difficulty and various disappointments that all human beings seem destined to encounter, to the very topmost pinacle of happiness:  Around him was sunshine, and clouds whose shapes of beauty made the prospect divine concealed from him the barren reality which lay hidden below them.  From this dizzy point he was dashed at once as he unawares congratulated himself on his felicity.  Fifteen months after their marriage I was born, and my mother died a few days after my birth.

A sister of my father was with him at this period.  She was nearly fifteen years older than he, and was the offspring of a former marriage of his father.  When the latter died this sister was taken by her maternal relations:  they had seldom seen one another, and were quite unlike in disposition.  This aunt, to whose care I was afterwards consigned, has often related to me the effect that this catastrophe had on my father’s strong and susceptible character.