Page:Letters of Junius, volume 2 (Woodfall, 1772).djvu/68

58 then, my Lord, is this the event of all the sacrifices you have made to Lord Bute's patronage, and to your own unfortunate ambition? Was it for this you abandoned your earliest friendships,—the warmest connexions of your youth, and all those honourable engagements, by which you once solicited, and might have acquired the esteem of your country? Have you secured no recompence for such a waste of honour?—Unhappy man! what party will receive the common deserter of all parties? Without a client to flatter, without a friend to console you, and with only one companion from the honest House of Bloomsbury, you must now retire into a dreadful solitude. At the most active period of life, you must quit the busy scene, and conceal yourself from the world, if you would hope to save the wretched remains of a ruined reputation. The vices operate like age,—bring on disease before its time, and in the prime of youth leave the character broken and exhausted.

your conduct has been mysterious, as well as contemptible. Where is now that firmness, or obstinacy, so long boasted of by