him from lavishing it idly, or make him think of tomorrow. Sometimes they were living in decent lodgings with tolerable comfort; sometimes in a wretched garret without necessaries; not to speak of the spunging- houses and hiding-places where he was occasionally to be found. His elastic gaiety of spirit carried him through it all; but, meanwhile, care and anxiety were preying upon her more delicate mind, and undermining her constitution. She gradually declined, caught a fever, and died in his arms." As usual, Mr. Keightley has done his best to test this statement to the utmost. Part of his examination may be neglected, because it is based upon the misconception that Lord Wharncliffe, Lady Mary's greatgrandson, and not Lady Stuart, her granddaughter, was the writer of the foregoing account. But as a set-off to the extreme destitution alleged, Mr. Keightley very justly observes that Mrs. Fielding must for some time have had a maid, since it was a maid who had been devotedly attached to her whom Fielding subsequently married. He also argues that "living in a garret and skulking in out o' the way retreats," are incompatible with studying law and practising as a barrister. Making every allowance, however, for the somewhat exaggerated way in which those of high rank often speak of the distresses of their less opulent kinsfolk, it is probable that Fielding's married life was one of continual shifts and privations. Such a state of things is completely in accordance with his profuse nature [Footnote: The passage as to his imprudence is, oddly enough, omitted from Mr. Keightley's quotation.] and his precarious means. Of his family by the first Mrs. Fielding no very material particulars have been preserved. Writing, in November 1745, in the _True Patriot_, he speaks of having a son and a daughter, but no son by his first wife seems to have survived him. The late Colonel Chester found the burial of a "James Fielding, son of Henry Fielding," recorded under date of 19th February 1736, in the register of St. Giles in the Fields; but it is by no means certain that this entry refers to the novelist. A daughter, Harriet or Harriot, certainly did survive him, for she is mentioned in the _Voyage to Lisbon_ as being of the party who accompanied him. Another daughter, as already stated, probably died in the winter of 1742-3; and the _Journey from this World to the Next_ contains the touching reference to this or another child, of which Dickens writes so warmly in one of his letters. "I presently," says Fielding, speaking of his entrance into Elysium, "met a little Daughter, whom I had lost several Years before. Good Gods! what Words can describe the Raptures, the melting passionate Tenderness, with which we kiss'd each other, continuing in our Embrace, with the most extatic Joy, a Space, which if Time had been measured here as on Earth, could not have been less than half a Year."