He died in debt, and his little property was seized immediately by his creditors. My mother, pennyless and burdened with two children, waited week after week, and month after month, in sickening expectation of a reply, which never came. She had no experience beyond her father’s cottage; and the mansion of the lord of the manor was the chiefest type of grandeur she could conceive. During my father’s life, she had been made familiar with the name of royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, ill according with her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him who gave substance and reality to them, vague and fantastical. If, under any circumstances, she could have acquired sufficient courage to address the noble persons mentioned by her husband, the ill success of his own application caused her to banish the idea. She saw therefore no escape from dire penury: perpetual care, joined to sorrow for the loss of the wondrous being, whom she continued to contemplate with ardent admiration, hard labour, and naturally delicate health, at length released her from the sad continuity of want and misery.