and he momentarily liable to the summons to the guillotine, and which in fact--oh, horror!--came at length, when they were all seated together, one day, at the breakfast-table! Oh, the feelings with which that unfortunate person must have daily regarded the countenances of those around him! How applicable to his condition the heart-breaking strains of Medea-- [Greek: Pheu pheu, ti prosderkesthe m' ommasin, tekna; Ti prosgelate ton panustaton gelôn; Ai, ai, ti drasô; Kardia gar oichetai, Gunaikes, omma phaidron ôs eidon teknôn.][29] The above passage was one which very frequently, on the occasions I have alluded to, occurred to the mind of Mr. Aubrey; for he felt himself indeed every moment at the mercy of those to whom he owed such a fearful amount of money, and for which he was liable, at any moment selected by malice or rapacity, to be plucked from his little home, and cast into prison! Oh, happy ye, now reading these pages, _unto whom the lines are fallen in pleasant places! yea, who have a goodly heritage_; who live, as it were, in a _land flowing with milk and honey_; with whom life glides away like a tranquil and pleasant dream; who are not sternly bidden _to eat your bread with quaking, and drink your water with trembling and with carefulness_,[30] nor _in vain to rise up early_, to _sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows_; who have, indeed, _no thought for the morrow_;--oh, ye who have leisure and ample means to pursue the objects of an honorable ambition, undisturbed by daily fears for daily bread--by terror, lest implacable creditors should at length frustrate all your efforts, drive you from your position in society, and precipitate you and yours into ruin;--I say, oh ye! do I appeal to you in vain? Do you turn from this painful portion of my narrative with indifference, or contempt, or wearisomeness? If the mere _description_, brief though it may be, of the sufferings of the Aubreys be trying and unpleasing to you, what must have been to them the actual _endurance_? Poor Aubrey! As he walked along the crowded thoroughfares, morning and evening, between the Temple and Vivian Street, what a disheartening consciousness he felt of his personal insignificance! Which of the passengers, patrician or plebeian, who met or passed him, cared--if personally unknown to him--one straw for him, or _would_ have cared a straw for him, had they even known the load of misery and misfortune under which he staggered past them? Every time that he thus passed between the scene of his absorbing labors at the Temple, and that green spot--his house in Vivian Street--in the world's wide desert, where only his heart was refreshed by the never-failing spring of domestic love and tenderness, he felt, as it were, but a prisoner out upon parole! It is easy to understand that, when a man walks along the streets of London, depressed in spirit, and alarmed by the consciousness of increasing pecuniary embarrassment, his