acquired habits of deference to authority, which caused
him, on all necessary occasions, to regulate his conduct
by the orders of his superiors, and so strongly was this
engrafted on his nature, that while he possessed mind
and energy sufficient to plan the most feasible measures
himself, his dread of that responsibility which
circumstances had now forced upon him, induced the utmost
disinclination to depart from the letter of an instruction
once received, and unrevoked.

These, however, were purely faults of his military
education. To a commanding person and dignified manners,
Captain Headley united a mind highly cultivated, and
feelings and sentiments which could not fail to secure
the respect even of those who were most ready to condemn
that caution and prudence of character which so eminently
distinguished his career as a subordinate soldier. It
was well known and conceded that, if he erred, the error
grew not so much out of his own want of judgment, but
was rather the fruit of the too great deference to
authority which led him, implicitly, to adopt the judgment
of others. In the private relations of life, he was
deservedly esteemed, excelling in all those higher
accomplishments that ensure favor with society, and seldom
fail to win for their possessor the approbation of women.
Such, indeed, had been his success in this particular
application of the gifts with which nature had endowed
him, that he had, for some years, been the possessor of
the affections and the hand of one of the noblest of her
sex, whom, however, we shall take a later opportunity of