278 ANECDOTE OF A HIGHWAYMAN. 



young man, of pleasing person and manners, and of a good un- 

 derstanding, who might have been an ornament to his country* 

 the delight and solace of his family, thus cut off in the prime of 

 life, by adhering to a system radically preposterous and unwar- 

 rantable. Rushing from the afflicting scene, he relieved himself 

 by a shower of tears. The criminal soon after suffered an igno- 

 minious death. But the worthy ciergym.ao did not let his 

 feelings make him forget his duly. He considered virtue as 

 something more than a well-sounded period, or an harmonious 

 flow of words, and recollecting that the deceased had left a 

 mother, widow, and children, he hastened to them, and became 

 a parent to the fatherless, promoting, and largely contributing to 

 a subscription in their favour. lu exercising this kind office, he 

 procured further information concerning this unhappy man ; he 

 found that he vvas the son of an industrious and successful me- 

 chanic, who had realized a small fortune by frugality and per- 

 severance, but instigated by the vanity or folly of his wife, 

 and perhaps glad to make that an excuse for indulging his own, 

 he had yielded in an unlucky moment to the infatuation of the 

 times. He gave his eldest son a genteel and expensive educa- 

 tion, that pernicious weakness in large families of small fortune, 

 he taught him to despise that humble, but honest art, which had 

 raised his family from indigence ; the fabrication of some one 

 part of the complex machintry of a watch, in the formation of 

 which human industry is divided into so many separate and 

 distinct branches, while the putting the whole together and 

 superintendins: its movements constitute another reputable em- 

 ployment. The young man was thus disqualified for treading 

 in the footsteps of his father, which would have led him by the 

 paths of duty and regularity, to health of body, peace of mind, 

 and competency : he became that wretchedest of all beings, an 

 accomplished gentleman without fortune, without any intellec- 

 tual or material dexterity which would enable him to procure 

 one; a class of men to whom the gaming-table or the road affords 

 a common last resource. He had been taught to spend, and 

 actually had spent, thousands, but had not been initiated in 

 the more mercenary art of earning his dinner. But this was not 

 the whole of the evil; in frivolous or vicious pursuits, he had 

 dissipated a large portion of that property which, at his fiUher's 

 death, ought to have been equally divided among himself, his 

 brothers, and sister. The miserable parent felt, when it vvas too 

 late, the tflectsofhis mistake, and injudicious piutiality. Jn 



