'That has not virtue for its base.'


Sunday morning, I was called up at six o'clock, at the poor man's earnest
request, and found him in a terrible agony. O Jack! Jack! said he,
looking wildly, as if he had seen a spectre--Come nearer me!--Dear, dear
Belford, save me! Then clasping my arm with both his hands, and rearing
up his head towards me, his eyes strangely rolling, Save me! dear
Belford, save me! repeated he.

I put my other arm about him--Save you from what, my dear Belton! said I;
save you from what? Nothing shall hurt you. What must I save you from?

Recovering from his terror, he sunk down again, O save me from myself!
said he; save me from my own reflections. O dear Jack! what a thing it
is to die; and not to have one comfortable reflection to revolve! What
would I give for one year of my past life?--only one year--and to have
the same sense of things that I now have?

I tried to comfort him as well as I could: but free-livers to free-livers
are sorry death-bed comforters. And he broke in upon me: O my dear
Belford, said he, I am told, (and I have heard you ridiculed for it,)
that the excellent Miss Harlowe has wrought a conversion in you. May it
be so! You are a man of sense: O may it be so! Now is your time! Now,
that you are in full vigour of mind and body!--But your poor Belton,
alas! your poor Belton kept his vices, till they left him--and see the
miserable effects in debility of mind and despondency! Were Mowbray
here, and were he to laugh at me, I would own that this is the cause of
my despair--that God's justice cannot let his mercy operate for my