FROM DON ALPHONSO D'AQUILAR TO DON --------.

London.

Our cause gains ground daily. The great, indeed the only ostensible
object of my mission is nearly fulfilled; but I have another charge and
attraction which I am now about to explain to you. You know that my
acquaintance with the English language and country arose from my sister's
marriage with Mr. Falkland. After the birth of their only child I
accompanied them to England: I remained with them for three years, and I
still consider those days among the whitest in my restless and agitated
career. I returned to Spain; I became engaged in the troubles and
dissensions which distracted my unhappy country. Years rolled on, how I
need not mention to you. One night they put a letter into my hands; it
was from my sister; it was written on her death-bed. Her husband had
died suddenly. She loved him as a Spanish woman loves, and she could not
survive his loss. Her letter to me spoke of her country and her son.
Amid the new ties she had formed in England, she had never forgotten the
land of her fathers. "I have already," she said, "taught my boy to
remember that he has two countries; that the one, prosperous and free;
may afford him his pleasures; that the other, struggling and debased,
demands from him his duties. If, when he has attained the age in which
you can judge of his character, he is respectable only from his rank, and
valuable only from his wealth; if neither his head nor his heart will
make him useful to our cause, suffer him to remain undisturbed in his
prosperity _here_: but if, as I presage, he becomes worthy of the blood
which he bears in his veins, then I conjure you, my brother, to remind
him that he has been sworn by me on my death-bed to the most sacred of
earthly altars."