which I hoped, from my declining health, might speedily be the case. To conceal my rout I took a circuitous course, and sometimes walked from a post-town two or three miles, and sat down to await the arrival of some periodical or chance vehicle. The person whom I sought is the wife of a small farmer, near Cherril. Having walked this morning from Chipenham, I was overtaken by a return-chaise, which carried me to the Downs; leaving the carriage I struck to the right in quest of the hamlet, which I knew to be within two miles of the White Horse. As I pursued my solitary course a fellow started up from an hollow, who with a very short preface began to make proposals, that lost as I was I received with the indignation they deserved. As he became urgent I swooned away. When I returned to life I found the ruffian waiting my recovery, as he avowed his determination to perpetrate his purpose; looking about he suddenly ran off. Perceiving a chaise at some distance I accounted for his departure. I now found out that my pockets were rifled, and that I had not a single shilling left in the world. My strength quite exhausted, I was totally unequal to the short distance that I had to surmount; and now that my little store was plundered, I was reluctant to seek the intended asylum: to burden the scanty subsistence of hard earning industry, with the maintenance of inefficient idleness. I felt myself an outcast from society. My desolate situation, a wounded conscience, readily brought me home to myself. I wished to terminate my sufferings by death. Such were the feelings of a guilty mind in extreme misery, when your generous intervention enabled me to exercise cooler reflection.