I had gone some miles before I ever once thought of considering my fellow-travellers. My father, who was by my side, frequently desired me to dry up my tears and not give way so much to grief. But I found this event the only solace that was left to me, and it would have been cruel to have denied me the small consolation which this indulgence of my sorrow afforded. The rivulets of misery seemed at length to have dried their springs; and as they had before spontaneously flowed, they now in the same manner stopped their course, and I was able to make use of my visual orbs for their destined vocation.

            Our company consisted of two French prisoners who had been set at liberty by the Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle, a smuggler from the Isle of Man, and one of the actors belonging to the strolling company at Liverpool. They soon discovered their occupations by their conversation. The French officers very ingenuously acknowledged the civil and generous treatment they had met with in England, where they owned they had fared better, though they had been prisoners, than if they had been in actual service in their own country. The contraband trader agreed with the Frenchman that England was one of the most hospitable countries under the sun, and would in every sense be the best, if it was not for Customs-House officers and excisemen, who were the pest of society and the bane of all commerce. As to the actor, he complained loudly of the tyranny of managers and the want of discernment in auditors, who let merit go unrewarded, whilst they lavished the money upon foreign singers, dancers, and harlequins.

            My eyes and ears were the only organs capable of performing the office. As to my tongue, my spirits were by far too much depressed for me to attempt exercising it, and the only articulate sound I was capable of expressing was 'Heigh-ho!', which frequently escaped from me, and which, with my former tears, had thrown my father into almost as melancholy a mood as myself, and had not the topic veered to religion, he would have been as little emulous as myself of joining in it. But this was the diapason of all his argument, of all his reasoning. It was impossible to touch this key without tuning his pipe, to throw in that discord so necessary to constitute harmony. No sooner had the illegal trader given his sentiments upon the significance of Customs-House oaths, than Mr Brown immediately entered upon the subject, and proved, by very learned and theological arguments, that a man must be irretrievably damned who was guilty of the crime of perjury. No one had the audacity to oppose this opinion directly. But the smuggler put an interrogation to Mr Brown which somewhat disconcerted him, as he was not prepared with an answer: whether there were as many hells as there were crimes. 'If not,' continued the querist, 'all punishments are alike, and there is no justice in the decree.' This was a bold assertion in the presence of my father, and he called for all his zeal, and no small share of superstition, to prove that there were two hells, or rather one and a half, as Purgatory could not be looked upon as a complete state of damnation. The primitive fathers, and many modern theological writers, were overhauled to support his doctrine, which was as soporific as it was orthodox, and lulled me to a more gentle and salutary sleep than I had experienced for some days.

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