The Idle ’prentice Returned from Sea, and in a Garret with a Common Prostitute.

“The sound of a shaken leaf shall chase him.”

Leviticus, chap. xxvi. verse 26.

The idle apprentice, as appears by this print, is advancing with rapid strides towards his fate. We are to suppose him returned from sea after a long voyage; and to have met with such correction abroad for his obstinacy, during his absence from England, that though it was found insufficient to alter his disposition, yet it determined him to pursue some other way of life; and what he entered on is here but too evident (from the pistols by the bed-side, and the trinkets his companion is examining, in order to strip him of) to be that of the highway. He is represented in a garret, with a common prostitute, the partaker of his infamy, awaking, after a night spent in robbery and plunder, from one of those broken slumbers which are ever the consequences of a life of dishonesty and debauchery. Though the designs of Providence are visible in every thing, yet they are never more conspicuous than in this — that whatever these unhappy wretches possess by wicked and illegal means, they seldom comfortably enjoy. In this scene we have one of the finest pictures imaginable of the horrors of a guilty conscience. Though the door is fastened in the strongest manner with a lock and two bolts, and with the addition of some planks from the flooring, so as to make his retreat a............