At the time I am now to speak of, I was living in perfect seclusion, and uninterrupted solitude. Captain ---- was always in Dublin, and my chief occupation was in hunting out, and transcribing and arranging matter for the professional gentlemen conducting the lawsuit, from a mass of confused family papers and documents. Our property consisted of a large number of poor cabins with their adjoining land, forming a complete street on the outskirts of the town, which was greatly in arrear to the head landlords, and a periodical "distress" took place. On these occasions a keeper was set over the property, some legal papers were served, and the household goods--consisting of iron kettles, wooden stools, broken tables, a ragged blanket or two, and the little store of potatoes, the sole support of the wretched inhabitants--were brought out, piled in a long row down the street, and "canted," that is, put up to sale, for the payment of perhaps one or two per cent. of the arrears. This horrified me beyond measure: I was ashamed to be seen among the people who were called our tenants, though this proceeding did not emanate from their immediate landlord; and every thing combined to render the seclusion of my own garden more congenial to me than any wider range. It was then that I came to the resolution of being a perfect devotee in religion: I thought myself marvellously good; but something of monastic mania seized me. I determined to emulate the recluses of whom I had often read; to become a sort of Protestant nun; and to fancy my garden, with its high stone-walls and little thicket of apple-trees, a convent enclosure. I also settled it with myself to pray three or four times every day, instead of twice; and with great alacrity entered upon this new routine of devotion.