"When I was a young man, toiling my way to fortune through the labours of the Bar,--prudent, cautious, indefatigable, confident of success,--certain lords, who heard I possessed genius, and thought I might become their tool, came to me, and besought me to enter parliament. I told them I was poor--was lately married--that my public ambition must not be encouraged at the expense of my private fortunes. They answered, that they pledged themselves those fortunes should be their care. I yielded; I deserted my profession; I obeyed their wishes; I became famous--and a ruined man! They could not dine without me; they could not sup without me; they could not get drunk without me; no pleasure was sweet but in my company. What mattered it that, while I ministered to their amusement, I was necessarily heaping debt upon debt--accumulating miseries for future years--laying up bankruptcy, and care, and shame, and a broken heart, and an early death? But listen, Constance! Are you listening?--attentively?--Well! note now, I am a just man. I do not blame my noble friends, my gentle patrons, for this. No: if I were forgetful of my interests, if I preferred their pleasure to my happiness and honour, that was any crime, and I deserve the punishment! But, look you,--time went by, and my constitution was broken; debts came upon me; I could not pay; men mistrusted my word; my name in the country fell: With my health, my genius deserted me; I was no longer useful to my party; I lost my seat in parliament; and when I was on a sick-bed--you remember it, Constancy--the bailiffs came, and tore me away for a paltry debt--the value of one of those suppers the Prince used to beg me to give him. From that time my familiars forsook me!--not a visit, not a kind act, not a service for him whose day of work was over! 'Poor Vernon's character was gone! Shockingly involved--could not perform his promises to his creditors--always so extravagant--quite unprincipled--must give him up!' "In those sentences lies the secret of their conduct. They did not remember that _for_ them, _by_ them, the character was gone, the promises broken, the ruin incurred! They thought not how I had served them; how my best years had been devoted to advance them--to ennoble their cause in the lying page of History! All this was not thought of: my life was reduced to two epochs--that of use to them--that not. During the first, I was honoured; during the last, I was left to starve--to rot! Who freed me from prison?--who protects me now? One of my 'party'--my 'noble friends'--my 'honourable, right honourable friends'? No! a tradesman whom I once served in my holyday, and who alone, of all the world, forgets me not in my penance. You see gratitude, friendship, spring up only in middle life; they grow not in high stations!