lents--but here ended his reminiscence.

Meanwhile my father, forgotten, could not forget. He repined for the loss
of what was more necessary to him than air or food--the excitements of
pleasure, the admiration of the noble, the luxurious and polished living of
the great. A nervous fever was the consequence; during which he was nursed
by the daughter of a poor cottager, under whose roof he lodged. She was
lovely, gentle, and, above all, kind to him; nor can it afford
astonishment, that the late idol of high-bred beauty should, even in a
fallen state, appear a being of an elevated and wondrous nature to the
lowly cottage-girl. The attachment between them led to the ill-fated
marriage, of which I was the offspring. Notwithstanding the tenderness and
sweetness of my mother, her husband still deplored his degraded state.
Unaccustomed to industry, he knew not in what way to contribute to the
support of his increasing family. Sometimes he thought of applying to the
king; pride and shame for a while withheld him; and, before his necessities
became so imperious as to compel him to some kind of exertion, he died. For
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
circumst