given her heart away too soon. Given once, the pure bashful maiden was
too modest, too tender, too trustful, too weak, too much woman to
recall it. We are Turks with the affections of our women; and have
made them subscribe to our doctrine too. We let their bodies go abroad
liberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink bonnets to disguise
them instead of veils and yakmaks. But their souls must be seen by
only one man, and they obey not unwillingly, and consent to remain at
home as our slaves--ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.

So imprisoned and tortured was this gentle little heart, when in the
month of March, Anno Domini 1815, Napoleon landed at Cannes, and Louis
XVIII fled, and all Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell, and old
John Sedley was ruined.

We are not going to follow the worthy old stockbroker through those
last pangs and agonies of ruin through which he passed before his
commercial demise befell. They declared him at the Stock Exchange; he
was absent from his house of business: his bills were protested: his
act of bankruptcy formal. The house and furniture of Russell Square
were seized and sold up, and he and his family were thrust away, as we
have seen, to hide their heads where they might.

John Sedley had not the heart to review the domestic establishment who
have appeared now and anon in our pages and of whom he was now forced
by poverty to take leave. The wages of those worthy people were
discharged with that punctuality which men frequently show who only owe
in great sums--they were sorry to leave good places--but they did not
break their hearts at parting from their adored master and mistress.
Amelia's maid was profuse in condolences, but went off quite resigned
to better herself in a genteeler quarter of the town. Black Sambo,
with the infatuation of his profession, determined on setting up a
public-house. Honest old Mrs. Blenkinsop indeed, who had seen the
birth of Jos and Amelia, and the wooing of John Sedley and his wife,
was for staying by them without wages, having amassed a considerable
sum in their service: and she accompanied the fallen people into their
new and humble place of refuge, where she tended them and grumbled
against them for a while.

Of all Sedley's opponents in his debates with his creditors which now
ensued, and harassed the feelings of the humiliated old gentleman so
severely, that in six weeks he oldened more than he had done for
fifteen year