parole, sent to the Tothill Fields prison, and
thence to the hulks at Chatham. After a
twelvemonth of rigorous confinement, he was
released and again trusted on parole at Reading;
where he wrote a book upon the state of
Christianity at Otaheite. At the end of the
war he set forth as a tourist on foot through
France and Germany, and founded that
work from which we have already
given some extracts, and in which he not
only takes mean ways of currying favour
with the English generally, but does not
forget the conciliatory temper and affable
manners of Captain Woodroffe at Portsmouth,
and Captain Hutchenson, at Chatham,
who were superintendents of the
prison-ships, and is piously grieved that such
a person as General Lefebvre Donenette
should violate his parole.

To end the story in a summary way, Mr.
Jorgenson, two or three years after his
return from travel, was convicted at the Old
Bailey of theft from his lodgings in
Warren Street, Fitzroy Square, and
sentenced to seven years' transportation. After
two years he was liberated on condition
of exile; but he did not leave England,
was again arrested for being
unlawfully at large, and condemned to death.
His sentence was again commuted. He was
an exemplary convict, from whose hand we
have a holy book: The Religion of Christ is
the Religion of Nature: written in the
condemned cells of Newgate, by Jorgen Jorgenson,
late Governor of Iceland. In this book
he says that he was a sincere Christian till
his thirtieth year, when he became an
atheist through reading Gibbon's Decline
and Fall; and that, from that time, he was lost
to all sense of principle till his conversion in
Newgate. So the authorities of Newgate
made him comfortable. He was kept among
them for four years as an assistant in the
infirmary; and, at last, sent over to a
penal settlement for one-and-twenty years.
There ends the known history of this
protector. His pious book was published after
his departure, as we may reasonably suppose,
by the gaol chaplain when he was next in
want of a good testimonial, and therein the
world learnt from Jorgenson himself how he
was "born with the finest affections of the
heart and mind; he was highly gifted, and
at an early age engaged in an honourable
profession, wherein he in a short time
acquired competence and reputation. His good
temper"—he is in this passage pleasantly
dallying with himself in the third person—"his
good temper and benevolent disposition," &c.,
&c., &c. "But, lo! the enemy came and
sowed tares in the night. At the age above-
named, he accidentally met with Gibbon's,"
&c., &c., &c. All which, the Gentleman's
Magazine, closing a review of the book,
considers "rather curious than valuable,"
adding: "The literary labours of historical
personages are always interesting, even
if less intrinsically valuable than this
volume; nor can we imagine a fairer likelihood
of fame than his, whose political career
will be perpetuated in the annals of his
country; whose conversion will secure to him
a prominent post in those of religion; and
whose arguments will be cited as conclusive
in the most important of controversies."

Thus commended, Mr. Jorgenson lived
before his time. He should have been a
ticket-of-leave man.

THE POOR CLARE.

IN THREE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE SECOND.

I NOW come to the time in which I myself
was mixed up with the people that I have
been writing about. And to make you
understand how I became connected with them,
I must give you some little account of myself.
My father was the younger son of a Devonshire
gentleman of moderate property; my
eldest uncle succeeded to the estate of his
forefathers, my second became an eminent
attorney in London, and my father took
orders. Like most poor clergymen, he had a
large family; and I have no doubt was glad
enough when my London uncle, who was a
bachelor, offered to take charge of me, and
bring me up to be his successor in business.

In this way I came to live in London, in
my uncle's house, not far from Gray's Inn,
and to be treated and esteemed as his son,
and to labour with him in his office. I was
very fond of the old gentleman. He was the
confidential agent of many country squires,
and had attained to his present position as
much by knowledge of human nature as by
knowledge of law; though he was learned
enough in the latter. He used to say his
business was law, his pleasure heraldry.
With his intimate acquaintance with family
history, and all the tragic courses of life
therein involved, to hear him talk at leisure
times about any coat of arms that came
across his path, was as good as a play or a
romance. Many cases of disputed property
dependent on a love of genealogy, were
brought to him, as to a great authority on
such points. If the lawyer who came to
consult him was young, he would take no
fee, only give him a long lecture on the
importance of attending to heraldry; if the
lawyer was of mature age and good standing,
he would mulct him pretty well, and abuse
him to me afterwards as negligent of one
great branch of the profession. His house
was in a stately new street called Ormond
Street, and in it he had a handsome library;
but all the books in it treated of things that
were past; none of them planned or looked
forward into the future. I worked away—
partly for the sake of my family at home,
partly because my uncle had really taught
me to enjoy the kind of practice in which he
himself took such delight. I suspect I worked
too hard; at any rate, in seventeen hundred