Now for Colonel _Constant’s_ Epistle; you see it is folded and directed
with the utmost care.
_MADAM_,
‘I do myself the honour to write to you this evening because I believe
to-morrow will be a day of battle, and something forebodes in my breast
that I shall fall in it. If it proves so, I hope you will hear I have
done nothing below a man who had a love of his country, quickened by a
passion for a woman of honour. If there be any thing noble in going to a
certain death; if there be any merit, I meet it with pleasure, by
promising myself a place in your esteem; if your applause, when I am no
more, is preferable to the most glorious life without you; I say, Madam,
if any of these considerations can have weight with you, you will give
me a kind place in your memory, which I prefer to the glory of _Cæsar_.
I hope, this will be read, as it is writ, with tears.’
The beloved Lady is a woman of a sensible mind; but she has confessed to
me, that after all her true and solid value for _Constant_, she had much
more concern for the loss of _Careless_. Those great and serious spirits
have something equal to the adversities they meet with, and consequently
lessen the objects of pity. Great accidents seem not cut out so much for
men of familiar characters, which makes them more easily pitied, and
soon after beloved. Add to this, that the sort of love which generally
succeeds, is a stranger to awe and distance. I asked _Romana_, whether
of the two she should have chosen had they survived? She said, She knew
she ought to have taken _Constant_; but believed, she should have chosen
_Careless_.
* * *