ovely and fresh for the mourning
habiliments which she wore. And my lady viscountess said--

" 'Beatrix, this is Mr. Steele, gentleman-usher to the prince's highness.
When does your new comedy appear, Mr. Steele?' I hope thou wilt be out of
prison for the first night, Harry."

The sentimental captain concluded his sad tale, saying, "Faith, the beauty
of _Filia pulcrior_ drove _pulcram matrem_ out of my head; and yet as I
came down the river, and thought about the pair, the pallid dignity and
exquisite grace of the matron had the uppermost, and I thought her even
more noble than the virgin!"

-------------------------------------

The party of prisoners lived very well in Newgate, and with comforts very
different to those which were awarded to the poor wretches there (his
insensibility to their misery, their gaiety still more frightful, their
curses and blasphemy, hath struck with a kind of shame since--as proving
how selfish, during his imprisonment, his own particular grief was, and
how entirely the thoughts of it absorbed him): if the three gentlemen
lived well under the care of the warden of Newgate, it was because they
paid well: and indeed the cost at the dearest ordinary or the grandest
tavern in London could not have furnished a longer reckoning, than our
host of the "Handcuff Inn"--as Colonel Westbury called it. Our rooms were
the three in the gate over Newgate--on the second story looking up Newgate
Street towards Cheapside and Paul's Church. And we had leave to walk on
the roof, and could see thence Smithfield and the Bluecoat Boys' School,
Gardens, and the Chartreux, where, as Harry Esmond remembered, Dick the
Scholar, and his friend Tom Tusher, had had their schooling.

Harry could never have paid his share of that prodigious heavy reckoning
which my landlord brought to his guests once a week: for he had but three
pieces in his pockets that fatal night before the duel, when the gentlemen
were at cards, and offered to play five. But whilst he was yet ill at the
Gatehouse, after Lady Castlewood had visited him there, and before his
trial, there came one in an orange-tawny coat and blue lace, the livery
which the Esmonds always wore, and brought a sealed packet for Mr. Esmond,
which contained twenty guineas, and a note saying that a counsel had been
appointed for him, and that more money would be forthcoming whenever he
needed it.

'Twas a queer letter from the scholar as she was, or as s