“See her full of anxiety and sorrow, yet calm and resigned to the will of Heaven. Notice the dejection; the eyebrows rise towards the middle of the forehead more than towards the cheeks; the eyeball appears full of perturbation; the white of the eye is turned yellow; the eyelids are drawn down, and a little swelled; all about the eye is livid; the nostrils are drawn downwards; the mouth is half open, and the corners are drawn down; the head carelessly leaning on one of the shoulders; the face is of a lead colour; the lips pale.

“Who,” my dear children,“can view this amiable countenance, without feeling interested for the object, a mother, and in sorrow—a mother in want—a mother in despair.

“The poor dear woman seems to be without the most distant prospect of relief; without the most remote chance of meeting with a friend; without means of extricating herself and her little ones from ruin; yet she ought not to despair, for Providence, when none appears, can find itself a way.

“There were two of those unhappy beings in the world, whose profits and enjoyments arise out of the distresses of their fellow-creatures—two huissiers, as they are called in France, or what we call sheriff’s officers; yet these people, my dear children, are necessary in the community, to preserve property, and to cause us to act with justice to each other; and when their unpleasant office is performed with decency and mildness, they do not deserve disapprobation. It happened, however, that the two officers who were in the poor widow’s room were of that description who debase the very nature of man, by rapacity and cruelty, and who, hardened by constant scenes of misery, commit every possible outrage on the distressed and friendless.

“See them busily employed, taking an inventory of the little effects of the poor widow, with an unfeeling composure, that disgraced even their profession. Here is the portrait of one of them, full of officious consequence and contempt for poverty. To the applications which are made to him by the poor widow for lenity, his hard inflexible features present only the face of