viands, and bestow the most unqualified compliments upon the liberality with which they were dispensed. Their praise on this score was certainly merited; for whether it was a dinner party or a ball, at Chisenbury House, no expense or trouble was spared to make the guests happy, and to send them away delighted with the entertainment. What a scene is this for me to look back upon. I might be said to have got into the whirlpool, into the very vortex of endless dissipation and folly! I saw and felt my error, but I knew not how to retreat. My wife, too, entered into the very marrow of this round of pleasure and gay society. The means to support all this were never wanting; for I found myself in possession of landed property in Wilts and Somerset, at Littlecot and Glastonbury, of the value of upwards of six hundred pounds a year, besides all the large farming business which my father had left me. There was, therefore, no deficiency of money; and I owe it to myself to say, that large as was my expenditure, I took care never to live fully up to my income; but had every year something considerable to lay by or to assist a friend with. Fond as I then was of pleasure, no man attended more strictly to his farming business than I did; and the farms of no man in the kingdom were managed better, or were in higher condition. My farms at that time were like gardens, and much cleaner and freer from weeds than most gardens; and I had the best flock of Southdown sheep in the country, bearing the very finest fleeces, the wool of which I sold for the very highest price in the kingdom. I one year sold my wool, consisting of _four thousand fleeces_, for a penny a pound more than was given for the boasted wool shorn from the flock of the famous Mr. Elman, of Glind, in Sussex. When, at an agricultural meeting, he was told of this fact, he very coolly answered, that his wool was most decidedly the best, and that the superiority of price which Mr. Hunt had obtained arose merely from the want of judgment in the purchaser. This question was, however, set at rest the very next year--for the wool dealer who had purchased Mr. Elman's wool, having heard of my flock, came all the way out of Sussex, from the neighbourhood of Chichester, and purchased my fleeces at _three half-pence_ a pound more than he had given for the crack Sussex wool, and he paid for the carriage, a distance of fifty miles, into the bargain. After this, Mr. Elman never disputed the point as to the superior quality of my wool. I mention this circumstance merely to show how determined I was to excel in every thing which I undertook--at least, that I did every thing with enthusiasm. I afterwards sold eight thousand fleeces at once, to some manufacturers, Dean, Forsey, and Co. of Chard, in this county, at the highest price that any wool sold for that season. Mr. Dean subsequently purchased _twenty lambs_ at my sale, that he might have some of the stock; which he sold to