pecuniary derangements obliged her to give up her school. Her father's
manners were singularly disgusting, as was his appearance; for he wore a
silvery beard which reached to his breast; and a kind of Persian robe
which gave him the external appearance of a necromancer. He was of the
Anabaptist persuasion, and so stern in his conversation that the young
pupils were exposed to perpetual terror. Added to these circumstances,
the failing of his daughter became so evident, that even during school
hours she was frequently in a state of confirmed intoxication. These
events conspired to break up the establishment, and I was shortly after
removed to a boarding-school at Battersea.

The mistress of this seminary, Mrs. Leigh, was a lively, sensible, and
accomplished woman; her daughter was only a few years older than myself,
and extremely amiable as well as lovely. Here I might have been happy,
but my father's remissness in sending pecuniary supplies, and my
mother's dread of pecuniary inconvenience, induced her to remove me; my
brother, nevertheless, still remained under the care of the Reverend Mr.
Gore, at Chelsea.

Several months elapsed, and no remittance arrived from my father. I was
now near fourteen years old, and my mother began to foresee the
vicissitudes to which my youth might be exposed, unprotected, tenderly
educated, and without the advantages of fortune. My father's
impracticable scheme had impoverished his fortune, and deprived his
children of that affluence which, in their in fancy, they had been
taught to hope for. I cannot speak of my own person, but my partial
friends were too apt to flatter me. I was naturally of a pensive and
melancholy character; my reflections on the changes of fortune
frequently gave me an air of dejection which perhaps etched an interest
beyond what might have been awakened by the vivacity or bloom of