POSITION AS A BANKER. 383 



sessed personal charms without vanity, and pre- 

 possessing manners without affectation. He was a 

 banker by profession, in partnership with his uncle, 

 Mr. Fincham, whose fortune at his death he inherited, 

 besides the bank at Diss. This concern had several 

 branches at different towns and villages in the nei^h- 

 bourhood, and, independently of his private fortune, 

 brought him a gentlemanly income, and he appa- 

 rently wanted for nothing that could conduce to his 

 happiness and well-being. But, alas, he wanted 

 more ! ' It is never,' we are told, ' without very 

 melancholy reflections that we can observe the mis- 

 conduct or miscarriage of those men who seem 

 exempt from the general frailties of human nature 

 and privileged from the common infelicities of life. 

 Though the world is crowded with scenes of calamity, 

 we look upon the general mass of wretchedness with 

 very little regard, and fix our eyes upon the state of 

 particular persons whom the eminence of their quali- 

 ties mark out from the multitude : as in reading- an 



o 



account of a battle, we seldom reflect on the vulvar 

 heaps of the slain, but follow the hero with our whole 

 attention through all the varieties of his fortune, 

 without a thought of the thousands that have fallen 

 around him.' 



Mr. Simpson may be well described as one of those 

 who, amongst his own associates and connections at 

 least, was thus ' marked out from the multitude ' by 

 the solidity of an assured jDOsition; but also as one 



