fortune on foreign shores was but small. He was enough acquainted with
my father's affairs to know that of the money lent to him there was
little hope.

To me he wrote a letter which will sufficiently shew how kind he would
have been, had he possessed the power. It was inclosed in one to my
father, with directions to suffer me to read it now, and that it
should be preserved and given to me when age should have matured my
understanding. The following were its contents.

'TO HUGH TREVOR.

'My dear boy: young as you are, I have conceived a friendship and
affection for you, which perhaps inflict as severe a pang, at the
present moment, as any one of the distressing circumstances that
occasion my flight. Had I wealth to leave, I would endeavour to secure
you from the baneful effects of poverty; as it is, accept all that
I have to give, my best wishes, my dearest love, and a little good
advice. Though your understanding is greatly above your years, yet
you cannot have experience and knowledge enough of sorrow to conceive
what my feelings are: but if hereafter you should remember me, and
if at that most serious moment when you enter on the marriage state
you should wish for a friend like me to advise with, let this letter
supply my place. The miseries I have endured, by my mistakes on the
subject, are so strongly imprinted on my mind, that I can think
of nothing else; and, inapplicable as it may seem to your present
course of thought, I cannot persuade myself but that it is the most
interesting of all topics, upon which I could write to you.

'Of the wisdom of entering into the marriage state, and of the virtue