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CORSE DE LEON:

Or,

The Brigand.

A Romance.

by

G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

Author of "The Robber," "The Gentleman of the Old School," etc.

In Two Volumes.

VOL. I.







New-York: Published by Harper & Brothers, No. 82 Cliff-Street.
1841.




CORSE DE LEON;

OR,

THE BRIGAND.




CHAPTER I.


There are a thousand small and apparently accidental circumstances,
which, in our course through life, bring a temporary gloom upon us,
render our expectations from the future fearful and cheerless, and
diminish our confidence in all those things whereon man either rashly
relies or builds his reasonable trusts. Strength, youth, wealth, power,
the consciousness of rectitude, the providence of God: all these will
occasionally lose their sustaining influence, even upon the most hopeful
mind, from causes too slight to justify such an effect.

These accidental circumstances, these mental clouds, resemble much those
other clouds which sometimes, at the close of a bright day, come over a
landscape previously warm and shining, cast a gray shade over its rich
hues, shut out the redoubled glory of the setting sun, and make gloom
and shadow spread over the summer scene. Though nothing is changed but
the light in which things dwell, though the colour of the tree and the
form of the rock are the same, yet the brightness of the whole is
departed, and the lustre gone out as if for ever.

There are times, however, when a gloom, which seems to have no
counterpart in the physical world, comes over the mind; when all has
gone fairly with us; when every object around is full of brightness