s humanely take the opportunity of her present
distress to avoid paying their rent.*

* In some instances servants or tenants have been known to seize on
portions of land for their own use--in others the country
municipalities exacted as the price of a certificate of civism,
(without which no release from prison could be obtained,) such
leases, lands, or privileges, as they thought the embarrassments of
their landlords would induce them to grant. Almost every where the
houses of persons arrested were pilfered either by their own
servants or the agents of the republic. I have known an elegant
house put in requisition to erect blacksmiths' forges in for the use
of the army, and another filled with tailors employed in making
soldiers' clothes.--Houses were likewise not unfrequently abandoned
by the servants through fear of sharing the fate of their masters,
and sometimes exposed equally by the arrest of those who had been
left in charge, in order to extort discoveries of plate, money, &c.
the concealment of which they might be supposed privy to.

--So that I have no resource, either for myself or Mrs. D____, but the
sale of a few trinkets, which I had fortunately secreted on my first
arrest. How are we to exist, and what an existence to be solicitous
about! In gayer moments, and, perhaps, a little tinctured by romantic
refinement, I have thought Dr. Johnson made poverty too exclusively the
subject of compassion: indeed I believe he used to say, it was the only
evil he really felt for. This, to one who has known only mental
suffering, appears the notion of a coarse mind; but I doubt whether, the
first time we are alarmed by the fear of want, the dread of dependence
does not render us in part his converts. The opinion of our English sage
is more natural than we may at first imagine; or why is it that we are
affected by the simple distresses of Jane Shore, beyond those of any
other heroine?--Yours.

April 22, 1794.

Our abode becomes daily more crouded; and I observe, that the greater
part of those now arrested are farmers. This appears strange enough,
when we consider how much the revolutionary persecution has hitherto
spared this class of people; and you will naturally enquire why it has at
length reached them.

It has been often observed, that the two extremes of society are nearly
the same in all countries; the great resemble each