"That same evening the lovely babe expired, and the father grew frantic.
He made an attempt on his own life; and, being with difficulty
restrained, his agitation sunk into a kind of sullen insensibility, which
seemed to absorb all sentiment, and gradually vulgarised his faculty of
thinking. In order to dissipate the violence of his sorrow, he
continually shifted the scene from one company to another, contracted
abundance of low connexions, and drowned his cares in repeated
intoxication. The unhappy lady underwent a long series of hysterical
fits and other complaints, which seemed to have a fatal effect on her
brain as well as constitution. Cordials were administered to keep up her
spirits; and she found it necessary to protract the use of them to blunt
the edge of grief, by overwhelming reflection, and remove the sense of
uneasiness arising from a disorder in her stomach. In a word, she became
an habitual dram-drinker; and this practice exposed her to such
communication as debauched her reason, and perverted her sense of decorum
and propriety. She and her husband gave a loose to vulgar excess, in
which they were enabled to indulge by the charity and interest of some
friends, who obtained half-pay for the captain.

"They are now metamorphosed into the shocking creatures you have seen; he
into a riotous plebeian, and she into a ragged trull. They are both
drunk every day, quarrel and fight one with another, and often insult
their fellow-prisoners. Yet they are not wholly abandoned by virtue and
humanity. The captain is scrupulously honest in all his dealings, and
pays off his debts punctually every quarter, as soon as he receives his
half-pay. Every prisoner in distress is welcome to share his money while
it lasts; and his wife never fails, while it is in her power, to relieve
the wretched; so that their generosity, even in this miserable disguise,
is universally respected by their neighbours. Sometimes the recollection
of their former rank comes over them like a qualm, which they dispel with