of one whom I love, though he died before I was born. 'They are going to
put the carpets out of window,' he wrote to Rogers, 'and break into Mrs.
S.'s room and _take me_. For God's sake let me see you!' See him!--see
one friend who could and would help him in his misery! Oh! happy may
that man count himself who has never wanted that one friend, and felt
the utter helplessness of that want! Poor Sheridan! had he ever asked,
or hoped, or looked for that Friend out of _this_ world it had been
better; for 'the Lord thy God is a jealous God,' and we go on seeking
human friendship and neglecting the divine till it is too late. He found
one hearty friend in his physician, Dr. Bain, when all others had
forsaken him. The spirit of White's and Brookes', the companion of a
prince and a score of noblemen, the enlivener of every 'fashionable'
table, was forgotten by all but this one doctor. Let us read Moore's
description: 'A sheriff's officer at length arrested the dying man _in
his bed_, and was about to carry him off, in his blankets, to a
sponging-house, when Dr. Bain interfered.' Who would live the life of
revelry that Sheridan lived to have such an end? A few days after, on
the 7th of July, 1816, in his sixty-fifth year, he died. Of his last
hours the late Professor Smythe wrote an admirable and most touching
account, a copy of which was circulated in manuscript. The Professor,
hearing of Sheridan's condition, asked to see him, with a view, not only
of alleviating present distress, but of calling the dying man to
repentance. From his hands the unhappy Sheridan received the Holy
Communion; his face, during that solemn rite,--doubly solemn when it is
performed in the chamber of death, 'expressed,' Smythe relates, '_the
deepest awe_' That phrase conveys to the mind impressions not easy to be
defined, not soon to be forgotten.

Peace! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor pursued him
even into the 'waste wide,'--even to the coffin. He was lying in state,