his mind debilitated; his strength turned into weakness; unable to stir
or to move without help; not one ray of hope darting in upon his
benighted soul; his conscience standing in the place of a thousand
witnesses; his pains excruciating; weary of the poor remnant of life he
drags, yet dreading, that, in a few short hours, his bad will be changed
to worse, nay, to worst of all; and that worst of all, to last beyond
time and to all eternity; O Jack! what will he then think of the poor
transitory gratifications of sense, which now engage all his attention?
Tell him, dear Belford, tell him, how happy he is if he know his own
dying happiness; how happy, compared to his poor dying friend, that he
has recovered from his illness, and has still an opportunity lent him,
for which I would give a thousand worlds, had I them to give!'

I approved exceedingly of his reflections, as suited to his present
circumstances; and inferred consolations to him from a mind so properly
touched.

He proceeded in the like penitent strain. I have lived a very wicked
life; so have we all. We have never made a conscience of doing whatever
mischief either force or fraud enabled us to do. We have laid snares for
the innocent heart; and have not scrupled by the too-ready sword to
extend, as occasions offered, the wrongs we did to the persons whom we
had before injured in their dearest relations. But yet, I flatter
myself, sometimes, that I have less to answer for than either Lovelace or
Mowbray; for I, by taking to myself that accursed deceiver from whom thou
hast freed me, (and who, for years, unknown to me, was retaliating upon
my own head some of the evils I had brought upon others,) and retiring,
and living with her as a wife, was not party to half the mischiefs, that
I doubt they, and Tourville, and even you, Belford, committed. As to the
ungrateful Thomasine, I hope I have met with my punishment in her. But