He is of Scottish extraction, but, being left an orphan, his education was undertaken by a family of relations settled in Holland.

He was bred to commerce, and sent very early to one of our settlements in the East, where his guardian had a correspondent.

But this correspondent was dead when he arrived in India, and he had no other resource than to offer himself as a clerk to a counting-house.

The breaking out of the war, and the straits to which we were at first reduced, threw the army open to all young men who were disposed to embrace that mode of life; and Brown, whose genius had a strong military tendency, was the first to leave what might have been the road to wealth, and to choose that of fame.

The rest of his history is well known to you; but conceive the irritation of my father, who despises commerce (though, by the way, the best part of his property was made in that honourable profession by my great-uncle), and has a particular antipathy to the Dutch--think with what ear he would be likely to receive proposals for his only child from Vanbeest Brown, educated for charity by the house of Vanbeest and Vanbruggen! O, Matilda, it will never do; nay, so childish am I, I hardly can help sympathising with his aristocratic feelings.