have lost all feeling of compassion in the
bustling discharge of their offices; death is so familiar to them,
that they are not anxious to ward it off. Every thing appeared to be
conducted for the accommodation of the medical men and their pupils, who
came to make experiments on the poor, for the benefit of the rich. One
of the physicians, I must not forget to mention, gave me half-a-crown,
and ordered me some wine, when I was at the lowest ebb. I thought
of making my case known to the lady-like matron; but her forbidding
countenance prevented me. She condescended to look on the patients, and
make general enquiries, two or three times a week; but the nurses knew
the hour when the visit of ceremony would commence, and every thing was
as it should be.

"After my dismission, I was more at a loss than ever for a subsistence,
and, not to weary you with a repetition of the same unavailing attempts,
unable to stand at the washing-tub, I began to consider the rich and
poor as natural enemies, and became a thief from principle. I could
not now cease to reason, but I hated mankind. I despised myself, yet I
justified my conduct. I was taken, tried, and condemned to six months'
imprisonment in a house of correction. My soul recoils with horror
from the remembrance of the insults I had to endure, till, branded with
shame, I was turned loose in the street, pennyless. I wandered from
street to street, till, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, I sunk down
senseless at a door, where I had vainly demanded a morsel of bread. I
was sent by the inhabitant to the work-house, to which he had surlily
bid me go, saying, he 'paid enough in conscience to the poor,' when,
with parched tongue, I implored his charity. If those well-meaning
people who exclaim against beggars, were acquainted with the treatment
the poor receive in many of these wretched asylums, they would not
stifle so easily involuntary sympathy, by saying that they have all
parishes to go to, or wonder that the poor dread to enter the gloomy
walls. What are the common run of workhouses, but prisons, in which many
respectable old people, worn out by immoderate labour, sink into the
grave in sorrow, to which they are carried like dogs!"

Alarmed by some indistinct noise, Jemima rose hastily to listen, and
Maria, turning to Darnford, said, "I have indeed been shocked beyond
expression when I have met a pauper's funeral. A coffin carried on the
shoulders of three or four ill-looking wre