BETSY PATTERSON. 513 came back to Baltimore with her child, one of the most wretched of women. She thought that marrying into this family of Corsican robbers had elevated her in " rank " above her wise and virtuous father ! She wrote to that father many years after, describing her feelings at this time. " I hated and loathed a residence in Baltimore so mucn, that when I thought I was to spend my life there, I tried to screw my courage up to the point of committing suicide. My cowardice, and only my cowardice, prevented my exchanging Baltimore for the grave. After having married a person of the high rank I did, it became impossible for me ever to bend my spirit to marry any one who had been my equal before my marriage, and it became impossible for me ever to be contented in a country where there exists no nobility." She never, to the close of her long life of ninety-four years, ceased to cherish such sentiments. In 1849, she wrote from Baltimore to the celebrated Irish authoress, Lady Morgan, a letter in which she gives an amusing revelation of her interior self. " I consider it," she wrote, " a good fortune for myself that you inhabit London. To enjoy again your agreeable society will be my tardy compensation for the long-, weary, unintellectual years inflicted on me in this my dull native country, to which I have never owed advantages, pleasures, or happiness. I owe nothing to my country ; no one expects me to be grateful for the evil chance of having been born here. I shall emancipate myself, par la grace de Dieu, about the middle of July next ; and I will either write to you before I leave New York, or immediately after my arrival at Liverpool. " I had given up all correspondence with my friends in Europe during my vegetation in this Baltimore. What could I write about except the fluctuations in the: security
