"Happy the man whose constant thought (Though in the school of hardship taught) Can send remembrance back to fetch Treasures from life's earliest stretch; Who, self-approving, can review Scenes of past virtues, which shine through The gloom of age, and cast a ray To gild the evening of his day! Not so the guilty wretch confin'd: No pleasures meet his conscious mind; No blessings brought from early youth, But broken faith, and wrested truth; Talents idle and unus'd, And every trust of Heaven abus'd, In seas of sad reflection lost, From horrors still to horrors toss'd, Reason the vessel leaves to steer, And gives the helm to mad Despair." [Illustration: THE RAKE'S PROGRESS, PLATE VII.] It is pithily and profitably observed by Mr. Hugh Latimer, or some other venerable writer of his day, that "the direct path from a gaming-house is unto a prisonne, for the menne who doe neeste themselves in these pestiferous hauntes, being either fooles or cheates, be punished: if fooles, by their own undoing; if cheates, by the biting lash of the beadle, and the durance of their vile bodies." In the plate before us this remark is verified. Our improvident spendthrift is now lodged in that dreary receptacle of human misery--a prison. His countenance exhibits a picture of despair; the forlorn state of his mind is displayed in every limb, and his exhausted finances by the turnkey's demand of prison fees not being answered, and the boy refusing to leave a tankard of porter unless he is paid for it. We learn by a letter upon the table, that a play which he sent for the manager's inspection "will not doe;"[92] and we see by the enraged countenance of his wife, that she is violently reproaching him for having deceived and ruined her. To crown this catalogue of human tortures, the poor girl whom he deserted is come with her child,--perhaps to comfort him, to alleviate his sorrows, to soothe his sufferings: but the agonizing view is too much for her agitated frame; shocked at the prospect of that misery which she cannot remove, every object swims before her eyes, a film covers the sight, the blood forsakes her cheeks, her lips assume a pallid hue, and she sinks to the floor of the prison in temporary death. What a heart-rending prospect for him by whom this is occasioned! Should he in the anguish of his soul inquire, "Who is it that hath caused this?" that inward monitor, which to him must be a perpetual torment, would reply in the words that Nathan said unto David, "Thou art the man!" Such an accumulation of woe must shake reason from her throne. The thin partitions which divide judgment from distraction are thrown down, the fine fibres of the brain are overstrained, and in the place of godlike apprehension, "Chaos and anarchy assume the sway."