But these years of adversity had also taught him lessons whose memory remained with him to the last day of his life—lessons which he was among the first to teach to the unthinking world around him. Poverty and pain had spoilt him to some extent for society—had brought upon him a melancholy which he would strive vainly to banish with fits of strained and forced hilarity—had rendered him abrupt in speech and uncouth in gesture—but never hardened his heart. He had been poor himself—miserably poor—and his sympathies were with the poor, and his voice was honestly uplifted in their behalf. Long before Sir Samuel Romilly had arisen to denounce the harshness and cruelty of our penal code—long before the eagle glance of Howard had pierced into the gloom of the debtor's fetid prison, Goldsmith pointed out the effects of harsh legislation, and the evils and contamination of our gaols.He would leave his home at night to wander among the streets of the great, cold, wicked city, taking note of the misery and destitution he found there, and sympathising with the distress of the wretched outcasts whom none else would succour or befriend. And manfully was his voice raised against those who, having caused much of that wretchedness, were suffered, by a false and heartless system of mock morality, to escape the penalty of infamy they had justly incurred. In a publication called the "Bee," which he edited, there is a paper of matchless pathos, entitled a "City Nightpiece," in which he indignantly draws attention to poor houseless girls, who have been flattered and cozened into sin, and then left desolate in their misery. He concludes with the following withering denunciation of the authors of all this misery:— "But let me turn from a scene of such distress to the sanctified hypocrite, who has been 'talking of virtue till the time of bed',[1] and now steals out, to give a loose to his vices under the protection of midnight—vices more atrocious because he attempts to conceal them. See how he pants down the dark alley; and, with hastening steps, fears an acquaintance in every face. He has passed the whole day in company he hates, and now goes to prolong the night among company that as heartily hate him. May his vices be detected! may the morning rise upon his shame! Yet I wish to no purpose: villany, when detected, never gives up, but boldly adds impudence to imposture."