ey were felt within the busy circle of industry,
they crept about the family hearth, but abroad in the public ways, and
in the wretched haunts of misery, they held undisputed sway.

Among the throng which choked the passage of Temple-Bar toward evening,
an individual, shabbily clad, was dragging his steps wearily along, his
pallid countenance bearing an expression of misery beyond the more
common cares of his fellow-passengers. Turning from the great
thoroughfare he passed into a narrow lane, and reaching the door of a
mean dwelling he entered, ascended a dirty stairway four stories high,
and stood in his garret lodging. If that garret was bare, cold, and
dark, it was only like others, in which many a man before and since has
pined away years of neglect and penury, at the very moment when his
genius was cheering, enriching, enlightening his country and his race.
That the individual whose steps we have followed was indeed a man of
genius, could not be doubted by one who had met the glance of that
deep, clear, piercing eye, clouded though it was at that moment by
misery of body and mind that amounted to the extreme of anguish. The
garret of the stranger contained no food, no fuel, no light; its
occupant was suffering from cold, hunger, and wretchedness. Throwing
himself on a broken chair, he clenched his fingers over the manuscript,
held within a pale and emaciated hand.

"Shall I die of hunger--or shall I make one more effort?" he exclaimed,
in a voice in which bitterness gave a momentary power to debility.

"I will write once more to my patron--possibly--" without waiting to
finish the sentence, he groped about in the dull twilight for ink and
paper; resting the sheet on a book, he wrote in a hand barely legible:

"Nov. 20th 16--,

"MY LORD--I have no light, and cannot see to write--no fire and my
fingers are stiff with cold--I have not tasted food for eight and forty
hours, and I am faint. Three times, my lord, I have been at your door
to day, but could not obtain admittance. This note may yet reach you in
time to save a fellow-creature from starvation. I have not a farthing
left, nor credit for a ha'penny--small debts press upon me, and the
publishers refused my last poem. Unless relieved within a few hours I
must perish.

"Your lordship's most humble,
"Most obedient, most grateful servant,
-------- --------"

This letter, scarcely legible from the agitation and misery which
enfeebled the hand that w