 not so with others. A creditor, who had his bond for three thousand pounds, pursued and arrested him at Harwich. He was thrown into prison, but his companion—let me, at least, say that in her praise—would not desert him. She took lodging near the place of his confinement, and saw him daily. That, had she not done it, and had my personal condition allowed, should have been my province.

"Indignation and grief hastened the painful crisis with me. I did not weep that the second fruit of this unhappy union saw not the light. I wept only that this hour of agony was not, to its unfortunate mother, the last.

"I felt not anger; I had nothing but compassion for Fielding. Gladly would I have recalled him to my arms and to virtue; I wrote, adjuring him, by all our past joys, to return; vowing only gratitude for his new affection, and claiming only the recompense of seeing him restored to his family; to liberty; to reputation.

"But, alas! Fielding had a good but a proud heart. He looked upon his error with remorse, with self-detestation, and with the fatal belief that it could not be retrieved; shame made him withstand all my reasonings and persuasions, and, in the hurry of his feelings, he made solemn vows that he would, in the moment of restored liberty, abjure his country and his family forever. He bore indignantly the yoke of his new attachment, but he strove in vain to shake it off. Her behaviour, always yielding, doting, supplicative, preserved him in her fetters. Though upbraided, spurned, and banished from his presence, she would not leave him, but, by new efforts and new artifices, soothed, appeased, and won again and kept his tenderness.

"What my entreaties were unable to effect, his father could not hope to accomplish. He offered to take him from prison; the creditor offered to cancel the bond, if he would return to me; but this condition he refused. All his kindred, and one who had been his bosom-friend from childhood, joined in beseeching his compliance with these conditions; but his pride, his dread of my merited reproaches, the merits and dissuasions of his new companion, whose sacrifices for his sake had not been small, were obstacles which nothing could subdue.

"Far, indeed, was I from imposing these conditions. I waited only till, by certain arrangements, I could gather enough to pay his debts, to enable him to execute his vow:
