When we came to the house, which was in Soho-square, we discovered that it was indeed the man--the identical Matravis, who had done all that mischief in times past--but not in a condition to excite any other sensation than pity in a heart more hard than Allan's.
Intense pain had brought on a delirium--we perceived this on first entering the room--for the wretched man was raving to himself--talking idly in mad unconnected sentences--that yet seemed, at times, to have reference to _past facts_.
One while he told us his dream. "He had lost his way on a great heath, to which there seemed no end--it was cold, cold, cold,--and dark, very dark--an old woman in leading-strings, _blind_, was groping about for a guide"--and then he frightened me,--for he seemed disposed to be _jocular_, and sang a song about "an old woman clothed in gray," and said "he did not believe in a devil."
Presently he bid us "not tell Allan Clare."--Allan was hanging over him at that very moment, sobbing.--I could not resist the impulse, but cried out, "_This_ is Allan Clare--Allan Clare is come to see you, my dear Sir."--The wretched man did not hear me, I believe, for he turned his head away, and began talking of _charnel-houses_, and _dead men_, and "whether they knew anything that passed in their coffins."
To comfort the desponding parent with the thought that, without diminishing the stock which is imperiously demanded to furnish the more pressing and homely wants of our nature, he has disposed of one or more perhaps out of a numerous offspring, under the shelter of a care scarce less tender than the paternal, where not only their bodily cravings shall be supplied, but that mental _pabulum_ is also dispensed, which HE hath declared to be no less necessary to our sustenance, who said, that, "not by bread alone man can live": for this Christ's Hospital unfolds her bounty. Here neither, on the one hand, are the youth lifted up above their family, which we must suppose liberal, though reduced; nor on the other hand, are they liable to be depressed below its level by the mean habits and sentiments which a common charity-school generates. It is, in a word, an Institution to keep those who have yet held up their heads in the world, from sinking; to keep alive the spirit of a decent household, when poverty was in danger of crushing it; to assist those who are the most willing, but not always the most able, to assist themselves; to separate a child from his family for a season, in order to render him back hereafter, with feelings and habits more congenial to it, than he could even have attained by remaining at home in the bosom of it. It is a preserving and renovating principle, an antidote for the _res angusta domi_, when it presses, as it always does, most heavily upon the most ingenuous natures.