"With keen remorse, deep sighs, and trembling fears,
Repentant groans, and unavailing tears,
This child of misery resigns her breath,
And sinks, despondent, in the arms of death."--E.
[Illustration: THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS, PLATE V.]
Released from Bridewell, we now see this victim to her own
indiscretion breathe her last sad sigh, and expire in all
the extremity of penury and wretchedness. The two quacks, whose
injudicious treatment has probably accelerated her death, are
vociferously supporting the infallibility of their respective
medicines, and each charging the other with having poisoned her.[61]
While the maid-servant is entreating them to cease quarrelling, and
assist her dying mistress, the nurse plunders her trunk of the few
poor remains of former grandeur. Her little boy turning a scanty
remnant of meat hung to roast by a string; the linen hanging to
dry; the coals deposited in a corner; the candles, bellows, and
gridiron hung upon nails; the furniture of the room, and indeed every
accompaniment, exhibit a dreary display of poverty and wretchedness.
Over the candles hangs a cake of Jew's bread, once perhaps the
property of her Levitical lover, and now used as a fly-trap. The
initials of her name, M. H., are smoked upon the ceiling as a kind
of _memento mori_ to the next inhabitant. On the floor lies a paper
inscribed ANODYNE NECKLACE, at that time deemed a sort of CHARM
against the disorders incident to children;[62] and near the fire, a
tobacco-pipe and paper of pills.
A picture of general, and, at this awful moment, indecent confusion,
is admirably represented. The noise of two enraged quacks disputing
in bad English, the harsh vulgar scream of the maid-servant,
the table falling, and the pot boiling over, must produce a
combination of sounds dreadful and dissonant to the ear. In this
pitiable situation, without a friend to close her dying eyes or
soften her sufferings by a tributary tear,--forlorn, destitute,
and deserted,--the heroine of this eventful history expires; her
premature death brought on by a licentious life, seven years of
which had been devoted to debauchery and dissipation, and attended
by consequent infamy, misery, and disease. The whole story affords
a valuable lesson to the young and inexperienced, and proves this
great, this important truth, that A DEVIATION FROM VIRTUE IS A
DEPARTURE FROM HAPPINESS.
The emaciated appearance of the dying figure, the boy's thoughtless
inattention, and the rapacious, unfeeling eagerness of the old nurse,
are naturally and forcibly delineated.
The figures are well grouped; the curtain gives depth, and forms
a good background to the doctor's head; the light is judiciously
distributed, and each accompaniment highly appropriate.