one brief interval before this catastrophe, he looked forward to the
future, and contemplated with anguish the desolate situation in which his
wife and children would be left. His last effort was a letter to the king,
full of touching eloquence, and of occasional flashes of that brilliant
spirit which was an integral part of him. He bequeathed his widow and
orphans to the friendship of his royal master, and felt satisfied that, by
this means, their prosperity was better assured in his death than in his
life. This letter was enclosed to the care of a nobleman, who, he did not
doubt, would perform the last and inexpensive office of placing it in the
king's own hand.

He died in debt, and his little property was seized immediately by his
creditors. My mother, pennyless and burthened with two children, waited
week after week, and month after month, in sickening expectation of a
reply, which never came. She had no experience beyond her father's cottage;
and the mansion of the lord of the manor was the chiefest type of grandeur
she could conceive. During my father's life, she had been made familiar
with the name of royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, ill
according with her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him who
gave substance and reality to them, vague and fantastical. If, under any
circumstances, she could have acquired sufficient courage to address the
noble persons mentioned by her husband, the ill success of his own
application caused her to banish the idea. She saw therefore no escape from
dire penury: perpetual care, joined to sorrow for the loss of the wondrous
being, whom she continued to contemplate with ardent admiration, hard
labour, and naturally delicate health, at length released her from the sad
continuity of want and misery.

The condition of her orphan children was peculiarly desolate. Her own
father had been an emigrant from another part of the country, and had died