atire so justly provoked
would inflict so deadly a wound? Was I inhumanly barbarous because the
antagonist destroyed was morbidly sensitive? My conscience, therefore,
made me no reproach, and the public was as little severe as my
conscience. The public had been with me in our contest; the public knew
nothing of my opponent's deathbed accusations; the public knew only that
I had attended him in his last moments; it saw me walk beside the bier
that bore him to his grave; it admired the respect to his memory which
I evinced in the simple tomb that I placed over his remains, inscribed
with an epitaph that did justice to his unquestionable benevolence and
integrity; above all, it praised the energy with which I set on foot a
subscription for his orphan children, and the generosity with which I
headed that subscription by a sum that was large in proportion to my
means.

To that sum I did not, indeed, limit my contribution. The sobs of the
poor female child rang still on my heart. As her grief had been keener
than that of her brothers, so she might be subjected to sharper trials
than they, when the time came for her to fight her own way through the
world; therefore I secured to her, but with such precautions that the
gift could not be traced to my hand, a sum to accumulate till she was
of marriageable age, and which then might suffice for a small wedding
portion; or if she remained single, for an income that would place
her beyond the temptation of want, or the bitterness of a servile
dependence.

That Dr. Lloyd should have died in poverty was a matter of surprise at
first, for his profits during the last few years had been considerable,
and his mode of life far from extravagant. But just before the date of
our controversy he had been induced to assist the brother of his lost
wife, who was a junior partner in a London bank, with the loan of his
accumulated savings. This man proved dishonest; he embezzled that and
other sums intrusted to him, and fled the country. The same sentiment of
conjugal affection which had cost Dr. Lloyd his fortune kept him silent
as to the cause of the loss. It was reserved for his executors to
discover the treachery of the brother-in-law whom he, poor man, would
have generously screened from additional disgrace.

The Mayor of L----, a wealthy and public-spirited merchant, purchased
the museum, which Dr. Lloyd's passion for natural history had induced
him to form; and the sum thus obtained, togethe