They spent the winter with Prince Hoare, the
composer. In the spring following, Sheridan
broke out in a gorgeous house in Orchard-street,
Portman-square. With that step began
his ruin. That was in 1774. In 1816, Sheridan,
a worn-out, drunken, friendless, impoverished,
disgraced man, who had recklessly thrown
away his genius, expired in the extremist
poverty, the sheriff's officers eager to carry him
to die in a Cursitor-street sponging-house.

On a cast of that small delicate nervous
hand of Sheridan's, that had twice grasped the
sword with such deadly determination to chastise
a scoundrel, Tom Moore wrote this smart
epigram:

       Good at a fight, but better at a play;
       God-like in giving, but the devil to pay.

IN DIFFICULTIES. THREE STAGES.

THIRD STAGE. THROUGH THE BANKRUPTCY
COURT.

THERE is one particular in which the inmates
of the sponging-house in Bream's-buildings and
those of Whitecross-Street prison, resemble each
other. Every individual among them is—
according to his own account—on the eve of
release. Ask any prisoner for debt when he
expects to be set free, and in ninety-nine
instances out of a hundred be will reply that he
is certain to be at liberty next day, or, at furthest,
in a day or two. "Arrangements are being made,"
or "The affair will be settled off-hand," or "The
trifle he is in for would not detain him a day,
but that there are other matters which would be
compromised if he paid off this detainer;" and so
forth. It is very rare indeed to find a prisoner
who has looked his affairs in the face.

In Whitecross-street, it is astonishing what
an amount of freemasonry exists among the
residents. No sooner does a new inmate make
his appearance in a ward, t'an two or three
of his fellow-prisoners make up to him and
question him in the most off-hand manner as
to how much he is "in for," whether he has
been arrested on a capias or a ca. sa., whether
he intends to "go through the mill" (which
means, pass through the Bankruptcy Court), or
expects to settle? There is nothing offensive
or impertinent in the way these interrogations
are put, and he who is questioned is generally
quite as ready to answer as the questioners are
to ask. He finds himself in a position so new,
that he is glad to find any one who will give him
information. Prisoners are generally much
disposed to help each other. When a
prisoner is too poor to pay for his rations at
the general table, he is served by the warder
with food from the prison kitchen. This is
called being "on the county," for I believe the
county of Middlesex pays for the victuals of all
who are too poor to feed themselves. The food
is very fair in its way, but the having to
eat it alone, and having it brought in three
times a day for one or two prisoners in the
ward, is humiliating, and is an open confession
of destitution.

I would rather pass three months in solitary
confinement, with the means of improving my
mind, than remain one month in Whitecross-street.
Not that all the inmates of the prison
are of the ruffian stamp. I have met as
gentlemanly and intelligent men in Whitecross-street
as I have met out of it, and I have had as
kind offers of service made me in their small way
by men in difficulties as I ever had by wealthy
persons in the every-day world. But the bad
in that place are very bad. Card-sharpers,
betting loafers, blacklegs, joint-stock company
swindlers, captains who never belonged to
any regiment, clergymen who have been
deprived of their curacies or livings, all these
are mixed up with men who, though in debt,
are respectable, and who are struggling their
hardest to get out of their difficulties. To
the tavern-haunting ruffian—whose only source
of income is what he can pick up at cards, in
flash bets, and by exacting payment of what is
lost to him, but "welshing" when he loses to
others—it is no punishment at all to be shut up
in Whitecross-street for a month or two. But
to the decently educated mechanic, the respectable
shopkeeper, or the man who, although poor,
is a gentleman in his habits and ideas, it is a
very great punishment.

In one of the abominable sleeping-bunks
(which I have described in a previous chapter)
near me, was a young man—a student, if I
remember right, in some missionary college—
and next to him was a clergyman, the coolest
possible specimen of an unprincipled swindler,
though talking at times an immense deal of
cant. This reverend gentleman, some sixty
years of age, was the incumbent of a large parish
about a hundred miles from London. His
living was worth about five hundred pounds a
year, and his wife had six hundred pounds a
year in her own right. "I married her for her
money," the fellow told us openly, though he
had never seen one of us a week before. "She
was very ugly; she soon got jealous of every
woman that came near me." This with a
wink which a satyr might have been proud
of. "She demanded a legal separation; I
consented on condition that she allowed me half the
money; she agreed; but I found I could not get
on with three hundred pounds a year besides my
living. The bishop refused to induct me into
a better living which had been presented me,
because, he said, there was something against
my morals; and as my debts amounted to three
thousand six hundred pounds, they arrested
me, and now I must wipe all off in the
Bankruptcy Court." As a jolly boon companion
—he used somehow to get spirits into the
prison, although goodness knows how, and was
very liberal with the punch he made—I never
knew a pleasanter fellow than this reverend
gentleman; but I hope there are not many
clergymen of the English Church like him, and
I do not believe there are.

But by far the best fellow in the ward was