te
of time. The very instant the hour was ended, he ordered
"that dog" to be awakened, and to work we went. At this
sitting Thirty-five Thousand Pounds were lost and won. I was
very fortunate, for I lost a mere trifle--Ten Thousand
Pounds only!"

Dashall congratulated Fitzroy on his resolution, in having cut the
dangerous connexion, and expressed a hope that in due process of time he
would emancipate himself from the trammels of dissipation generally.

~115~~ "That," rejoined Fitzroy, "is already in a considerable degree
effected."

"In the higher and middle classes of society," says a celebrated writer,
"it is a melancholy and distressing sight to observe, not unfrequently,
a man of a noble and ingenuous disposition, once feelingly alive to a
sense of honor and integrity, gradually sinking under the pressure of
his circumstances, making his excuses at first with a blush of conscious
shame, afraid to see the faces of his friends from whom he may have
borrowed money, reduced to the meanest tricks and subterfuges to delay
or avoid the payment of his just debts, till ultimately grown familiar
with falsehood, and at enmity with the world, he loses all the grace and
dignity of man."--

"Such," continued Fitzroy, "was the acme of degradation to which I was
rapidly advancing, when an incident occurred to arrest the progress of
dissipation, and give a stimulus to more worthy pursuits.

"One morning having visited a certain nunnery in the precincts of
Pall-Mail, the Lady Abbess introduced me to a young noviciate, a
beautiful girl of sixteen.

"When we were left alone, she dropped on her knees, and in attitude
and voice of the most urgent supplication, implored me to save her from
infamy!"

"I am in your power," she exclaimed, "but I feel confident that you
will not use it to my dishonor.--I am yet innocent;--restore me to my
parents,--pure and unsullied,--and the benediction of Heaven will reward
you!"--

She then told me a most lamentable tale of distress;--that her father
was in prison for a small debt; and that her mother, her brothers and
sisters, were starving at home.--Under these disastrous circumstances
she had sought service, and was inveighd into that of mother W. from
whence she had no hope of extrication, unless through my generous
assistance! She concluded her pathetic appeal, by observing, that if the
honorable Frederick Fitzroy had listened to the call of humanity, and
paid a d