 to retire. To do this he farmed out his share for an annuity, which—finding it would be ill paid—he afterwards fold for an inconsiderable sum: and thus his failure of raising the glory of the arts in Great Britain, cost him only about eighteen hundred pounds!
He was not however dismayed at this. His intentions were the best in the world; and how could he prevent either the vitiated taste of the public, or the imposition of its purveyors.
His second scheme was to give a temporary relief—all he could do—to debtors, during that intermediate detention between the capture and the commitment to prison. He had, as I have noticed, paid a very nice attention to arrests in the earliest stages. He had come at instances of men who, by being brutally dragged out of their shops, for a paltry sum, to a spunging house, and kept there under various illegal pretences for several days—though ultimately released—had, in the interim, totally lost their credit, and were never again able to hold up their heads. He had found that bailiffs, in consequence of such scandalous practices, and extravagant charges, at their houses, had realized

large fortunes; nay he learnt, beyond all contradiction, of one who had, for a great length of time, amassed annually three thousand pounds, and was sure that some others were not much behind hand; yet this intolerable expence and shameful disgrace was nothing to the barbarous want of feeling and diabolical unconcern which tortured the poor debtor in this legal purgatory.
To remedy this evil, at least in some degree, our hero hit upon a plan that promised good success. He took the lease of a large house, had it partitioned into a number of convenient apartments, stored it with every proper article for his purpose, procured a victualler's licence, and placed a man in it of whom he had the best opinion, but whom he obliged to bring a responsible person to be joint security with him to the sheriff.
To this hotel debtors were, by advertisement, advised to go the moment they were arrested—for it is then in their power to insist upon being carried where they please—and there for one-fourth, perhaps one-fifth, of that sum for which they would be served with food and liquor they could neither eat nor drink, and huddled promiscuously among filth and nastiness without a retreat, unless perhaps by paying a still more exorbitant price, where they

could consult their friends—they were neatly accommodated, well served, and, in short, provided with every pleasurable convenience and humane attention that could at such a moment be most agreeable to them.
