father's attorney, who was of a remarkably mean adulating turn, and used to make me blush with his professions of attachment to my family. I told him I would dine with him upon condition that he did not drink my father's nor mother's health. The old dotard tells this to my stupid tutor. He consults a friend of his, one Colonel Browne, and all three agree that it argued such a determined depravity and wickedness of character that it must not be concealed from my father and mother, who were accordingly apprised in great form, by letter, of this alarming symptom of my disposition and character. To do my father justice he paid no regard to it.
"Soon after fifteen I came to London, where I was suffered to go about, to pick up what acquaintance offered, and in short had no restraint except in the article of money, of which I should not have had sufficient to answer the most common purposes, if it was not for old aunts again and cousins.
"Dr. Hort was my father's adviser. He was born of low-born but decent parents, at Marshfield in Wiltshire; he was bred among the Dissenters, and early connected with some very eminent men of that persuasion; and afterwards got acquainted with the famous Dr. Cheyne, a Scotch physician of considerable eminence at Bath. It was at that time a very small town in comparison of the present, and the customs of the place comparatively simple. The roads were so bad that the journey from London to Bath took up four or five days. The most famous inns on the road were two miserable houses now standing, at one of which Princess Amelia lodged in ——, and it was a good day's journey from thence to Bath. In those days the first men in the kingdom who were ordered to Bath for their health used to live mostly and sometimes lodge with their physicians and apothecaries, by which means it is surprising how very well informed I have myself found some of the old apothecaries, and what a good ton of conversation: for example Mr. Colborne, whose family owe a considerable fortune to the accident of a rich citizen lodging at their house.
