her, and five shillings--a large sum for him--found its way from his
kind hand to hers. Now the common ending might have come; now
starvation, the slow, unwilling, recourse to more shame and deeper vice;
then the forced hilarity, the unreal smile, which in so many of these
poor creatures hides a canker at the heart; the gradual
degradation--lower still and lower--oblivion for a moment sought in the
bottle--a life of sin and death ended in a hospital. The will of
Providence turned the frolic of three voluptuaries to good account; the
prince gave his purse-full, Sheridan his one last guinea for her present
needs: the name of the good-hearted Plush was discovered, and he was
taken into Carlton House, where he soon became known as Roberts, the
prince's confidential servant: and Sheridan bestirred himself to rescue
for ever the poor lady, whose beauty still remained as a temptation. He
procured her a situation, where she studied for the stage, on which she
eventually appeared. 'All's well that ends well:' her secret was kept,
till one admirer came honourably forward. To him it was confided, and he
was noble enough to forgive the one false step of youth. She was well
married, and the boy for whom she had suffered so much fell at
Trafalgar, a lieutenant in the navy.

To better men such an adventure would have been a solemn warning; such a
tale, told by the ruined one herself, a sermon, every word of which
would have clung to their memories. What effect, if any, it may have had
on Blackstock and his companions must have been very fleeting.

It is not so very long since the Seven Dials and St. Giles' were haunts
of wickedness and dens of thieves, into which the police scarcely dared
to penetrate. Probably their mysteries would have afforded more
amusement to the artist and the student of character than to the mere
seeker of adventure, but it was still, I remember, in my early days, a
great feat to visit by night one of the noted 'cribs' to which 'the
profession' which fills Newgate was wont to resort. The 'Brown Bear,' in
Broad Street, St. Giles', was one of these pleasant haunts, and thither
the three adventurers determined to go. This style of adventure is out
of date, and no longer amusing. Of course a fight ensued, in which the
prince and his companions showed immense pluck against terrible odds,
and in which, as one reads in the novels of the 'London Journal' or
'Family Herald,' the natural superiority of the well-born of