,,brother had been denied necessaries, for his sake, to per,,fect his education forsooth, for which he was to pay us such interest: I thought what the interest would come to;" with much more of the same kind; but I have, I believe, satisfied you with this taste.

My father, therefore, began now to return remonstrances, instead of money, to my demands, which brought my affairs perhaps a little sooner to a crisis; but had he remitted me his whole income, you will imagine it could have sufficed a very short time to support one who kept pace with the expences of Sir George Gresham.

It is more than possible, that the distress I was now in for money, and the impracticability of going on in this manner, might have restored me at once to my senses and to my studies, had I opened my eyes, before I became involved in debts, from which I saw no hopes of ever extricating myself. This was indeed the great art of Sir George, and by which he accomplished the ruin of many, whom he afterwards laughed at as fools and coxcombs, for vying, as he called it, with a man of his fortune. To bring this about, he would. now and then advance a little money himself, in order to support the credit of the unfortunate youth with other people; till, by means of that very credit, he was irretrievably undone.

My mind being, by these means, grown as desperate as my fortune, there was scarce a wickedness which I did not meditate, in order for my relief. Self-murder itself became the subject of my serious deliberation; and I had certainly resolved on it, had not a more shameful, though perhaps less sinful thought expelled it from my head. I protest, so many years have not washed away the shame of this fact, and I shall blush while I relate it. I had a chum, a very prudent, frugal young lad, who, though he had no very large allowance, had by his parsimony heaped up upwards of forty guíneas *), which I knew he kept in his escritore. I took

* In Ansehung der Englischen Münzen bemerken wir hier im Allgemeinen folgendes: es giebt in England vier Hauptarten von Silbermünzen: die Krone, welche 5 Schillinge enthält, die halbe Krone, den Schilling und den halben Schilling. Der Schilling beträgt etwa acht Groschen Sächsisch. Zwanzig Schillinge machen ein Pfund (pound), welches eine Englische

therefore an opportunity of purloining his key from his breeches pocket while he was asleep, and thus made myself master of all his riches. After which I again conveyed his key into his pocket, and counterfeiting sleep, though I never once closed my eyes, lay in bed till after he arose and went to prayers, an exercise to which I had long been unaccustomed.

Timorous thieves, by extreme caution, often subject themselves to discoveries, which those of a bolder kind escape. Thus it happened to me; for had I boldly broke open his escritore, I had, perhaps, escaped even his suspicion, but as it was plain that the person who robbed him had possessed himself of his key, he had no doubt, when he first missed his money, but that his chum was certainly the thief. Now as he was of a fearful disposition, and much my inferior in strength, and I believe, in courage, he did not dare to confront me with my guilt, for fear of worse bodily consequen→ ces, which might happen to him. He repaired therefore im¬ mediately to the vice-chancellor, and, upon swearing to the robbery *), and to the circumstances of it, very easily ob¬ tained a warrant against one who had now so bad a character through the whole university.

Luckily for me, I lay out of the college the next evening; for that day I attended a young lady in a chaise to Whitney **), where we staid all night; and in our return the next morning to Oxford, I met one of my cronies, who acquainted me with sufficient news concerning myself to make turn my horse another way.

Having now abandoned all thoughts of returning to Oxford, the next thing which offered itself was a journey to London. I imparted this intention to my female companion, who at first remonstrated against it; but upon producing my wealth, she immediately consented. We then struck across the country into the great Cirencester road ***), and made

Rechnungsmünze ist; ein und zwanzig Schillinge machen eine Guinee, eine wirkliche Goldmtinze. An Kupfermünzen hat man den penny (etwa 8 Pfennige nach unserm Gelde), halfpenny (4 Pfennige), und den farthing (2 Pfennige). *) Der Kläger ist nach den Englischen Gesetzen genöthigt, den Klagepunkt zu beschwören, che seine Anklage angenommen wird. **) Ein Flecken, nicht weit von Oxford. ***) Eine grofse Landstrafse, die nach dem Flecken Cirencester in Gloucestershire führt.

anch haste, that we spent the next evening (save one) in London.

I was now reduced to a much higher degree of distress than before; the necessaries of life began to be numbered among my wants; and what made my case still the more grievous, was, that my paramour, of whom I was now grown immoderately fond, shared the same distresses with myself. To see a woman you love in distress; to be unable to relieve her, and, at the same time, to reflect that you have brought her into this situation, is, perhaps, a curse of which no imagination can represent the horrors to those who have not felt it.

This circumstance so severely aggravated the horrors of my present situation, that they became absolutely intolerable. I could with less pain endure the raging of my own natural unsatisfied appetites, even hunger or thirst, than I could submit to leave ungratified the most whimsical desires of a woman, on whom I so extravagantly doated, that, though I knew she had been the mistress of half my acquaintance, I firmly intended to marry her. But the good creature was unwilling to consent to an action which the world might think so much to my disadvantage. And, as possibly, she compassionated the daily anxieties which she must have perçeived me suffer on her account, she resolved to put an end to my distress. She soon indeed found means to relieve me from my troublesome and perplexed situation; for while I was distracted with various inventions to supply her with pleasures, she very kindly betrayed me to one of her former lovers at Oxford, by whose care and diligence I was immediately apprehended and committed to gaol.

Here I first began seriously to reflect on the miscarriages of my former life, on the errors I had been guilty of; on the misfortunes which I had brought on myself; and on the grief which I must have occasioned to one of the best of fathers. When I added to all these the perfidy of my mistress, such was the horror of my mind, that life, instead of being longer desirable, grew the object of my abhorrence; and I could have gladly embraced death, as my dearest friend, if it bal offered itself to my choice unattended by shame.

The time of the assizes *) soon came, and I was re

Auf dem plamen Lande in England werden jährlich zweimal

moved by Habeas Corpus) to Oxford, where I expected certain conviction and condemnation; but, to my great sur prise, none appeared against me, and I was, at the end of the sessions, discharged for want of prosecution, In short, my chum had left Oxford, and whether from indolence, or from what other motive, I am ignorant, had declined conDe cerning himself any farther in the affair.

I had now regained my liberty, but I had lost my repu tation: for there is a wide difference between the case of a man who is barely acquitted of a crime in a court of justice, and of him who is acquitted in his own heart, and in the opinion of the people. I was conscious of my guilt, and uhamed to look any one in the face, so resolved to leave Oxford the next morning, before the daylight discovered me to the eyes of any beholders.

When I had got clear of the city, it first entered into my head to return home to my father, and endeavour to obtain his forgiveness; but as I had no reason to doubt his knowledge of all which had past, and as I was well assured of his great aversion to all acts of dishonesty, I could entertain no hopes of being received by him, especially since I was too certain of all the good offices in the power of my mother: nay, had my farther's pardon been as sure, as I conceived his resentment to be, I yet question whether I could

des Jahrs im Sommer und während dey Fastenzeit in jeder Grafschaft Kriminal-Gerichte gehalten. Die 12 königl. Richter reisen in den Distrikten, die sie unter sich vertheilt haben, zur Haltung derselben herum, Man nennt sie lentă und summer-assizes.

*) Habeas corpus Akte, oder das Recht, das jeder Engländer hat, die Ursache seiner Gefangennehmung zu wissen, innerhalb 24 Stunden ein vorläufiges Verkör, und nach demselben, wenn es kein Kapitalverbrechen ist, augenblickliche Loslassung gegen Stellung eines Bürgen, dafs er seine Sache nach den Gesetzen ausmachen will, au verlangen. Diese Akte ist von sehr grofsem Werth, und setzt die Person und das Eigenthum eines Engländers in die gröfste Sicher heit. Zur Zeit einer Rebellion, oder wenn der Staat in äusserster Gefahr ist, wird dem Könige durch Aufhebung dieser Akte auf eine gewisse Zeit, die Mackt vom Parliament gegeben, verdächtige Per sonen, ohne weitere Umstände, festsetzen zu lassen; allein dies ge schicht nur im äussersten Nothfall, und immer nur auf eine kurze, gom Parliament bestimmte Zeit Wendeborn's Zustand des Staats etc. in Grossbritannien, gegen Ende des 18ton Jahrhunderts, Theil I. S. 4.

have had the assurance to behold him, or whether I could, upon any terms, have submitted to live and converse with those, who, I was convinced, knew me to have been guilty of so base an action.

I hastened therefore back to London, the best retirement of either grief or shame, unless for persons of a very public character; for here you have the advantage of solitude without its disadvantage, since you may be alone and in company at the same time; and while you walk or sit unobserved, noise, hurry, and a constant succession of objects, entertain the mind, and prevent the spirits from preying on themselves, or rather on grief or shame, which are the most unwholesome diet in the world; and on which (though there are many who never taste either but in public) there are some who can feed very plentifully, and very fatally, when alone,

But as there is scarce any human good without its concomitant evil, so there are people who find an inconvenience in this unobserving temper of mankind; I mean persons who have no money; for as you are not put out of countenance, so neither are you clothed or fed by those who do not know you. And a man may be as easily starved in Leadenhallmarket, as in the deserts of Arabia.

It was at present my fortune to be destitute of that great evil, as it is apprehended to be by several writers, who, I suppose, were over-hurthened with it, namely, money. One evening, as I was passing through the Inner Temple*) very hungry, and very miserable, I heard a voice on a sudden hailing me with great familiarity by my christian name: and upon my turning about, I presently recollected the person who so saluted me, to have been my fellow-collegiate; one who had left the university above a year, and long before any of my misfortunes had befallen me. This gentleman, whose name was Watson, shook me heartily by the hand, and expressing great joy at meeting me, proposed our immediately drinking a bottle together. I first declined the proposal, and pretended business; but as he was very earnest and pressing, hunger at last overcame my pride, and I fairly confessed to him I had no money in my pocket; yet not

*) So heifsen gewisse Gebäude in London, die ehemals die Tempelherrn inne hatten, jetzt aber von jungen Leuten bewohnt werden, die sich der Rechtswissenschaft widmen.