Marchmont wanted not difcernment to see that this was only a civil way of the lady's relieving herfelf from all farther trouble; he returned dejected to his family, to whom, however, he made light of his difappointment, that he might not inflict new anguifh on the half-broken heart of his mother.

But when he fat down feriously to confider his fituation, this difappointment, which followed fo many others, fell cold and heavy on his fpirits. The creditors had threatened to arreft the remains of his father as they were proceeding towards the parish church of Eaftwoodleigh; and Marchmont, in the agony of his mind, had entered into per fonal engagements to ward off fo cruel' a blow: fubfequent difcoveries of the condition of his father's affairs had: rendered it impoffible for him ever to acquit himself of thefe engagements from the effects that were left. Nothing therefore remained for him but to attempt,

tempt, by fome exertions of his own, to fatisfy the inexorable men to whom he was now perfonally bound; and who, provoked by their loffes, declared their refolution to imprison him, unless fomet profpect opened which might enable him to difcharge the debt he had thus taken. upon himself.

To leave England therefore, and to escape from their threats and importunities, while he hoped to obtain, as a tutor, a falary which he might divide between them and his family, was his moft earnest wifh. But even this humble hope was now fruftrated; and though he appeared calm and compofed before his mother, who watched his countenance with the moft anxious folicitude, healmost for the first time felt what it was to look back on the paft without having one crime with which to reproach himfelf, yet forward to the future without a hope, and almost without a friend!

Generous.

Generous and candid himself, and respecting men only for their worth and their talents, he had never till now been thoroughly convinced that, with the generality of the world, there is no crime fo unpardonable as poverty; and that, when an untitled family fall to decay, their pretensions to ancestry, far from giving them a claim to commiferation, become ridiculous in the opinion of the fuddenly fortunate.-He, who might truly be faid to be.

"Of gentle blood, part shed in honour's cause,"

POPE.

was now purfúed for the fum of seven hundred pounds, by a man who called himself a gentleman, but was, in fact, a money-lender, the fon of a taylor; and haraffed by another for a thousand pounds, who had been an auctioneer, but who, having amaffed a confiderable fum of money, had quitted the hammer,, and was become a banker. Thefe

.

Thefe men, while they defpifed the indigence of poor Marchmont, and thought, like Eriggs, "that a pedigree pays no debts," had yet taken it into their heads, that a young man fo welk connected would not be fuffered to remain in prison, and that, if they threatened him with fuch an exertion of the power they had acquired over him, they fhould obtain at leaft fome part of the money for which he had engaged him felf. It was in vain that he affured them, that of his father's house he was the laft-while of the ruined fortunes of that houfe they could not be ignorant ; that as to the relations of his mother, though two of her fifters had married men of high rank, he was so far from having any intereft with them, that he was not even by fight known to any of his maternal relations.

Far from foftening the hearts of his. purfuers by this reprefentation of his circumstances, he found that the more desperate

desperate his fituation was, the less they feemed inclined to forbearance.-Tormented every day by fome new plan of the one (who, being himself a schemer, fancied that Marchmont might relieve himself by fome project), and perplexed by the threats of the other, he found that he must conceal himself from the perfecution of both, or that they would inevitably avail themfelves of that most improvident law, which enables a creditor to imprifon the debtor who cannot pay him when he is at liberty;-as if an unhappy man, torn from his friends, deprived of his credit, depreffed in his talents, and probably ruined in his health, could do more to pay his debts, than when he is at liberty to pursue his intereft, or make the most of his induftry-a law which confounds innocence with guilt, and equally punishes intentional fraud and inevitable misfortune; yet which exifts no where in fuch

force