CHAPTER VIII.
"Meanwhile the world, Ambition, owns thy sway,
Fame's loudest trumpet labours in thy praise;
For thee the Muse awakes her sweetest lay,
And Flattery bids for thee her altars blaze."
And now, while we take a retrospect of the parentage and life of General De Brooke, let us leave him and his family in their retired cottage, equally remote, we will suppose, from the cares and molestations of the world, as it undoubtedly was from every gay allurement.
Sir Aubrey De Brooke, the father of the General, possessed sentiments and principles wholly opposed to those of his son. In proportion as the former, worldly and aspiring, mounted, by degrees, the high summit of fame, the latter, however amiable in temper, yet indiscreet and volatile, sunk, in the same gradual succession, into obscurity.
Sir Aubrey, early in life, married an heiress, well knowing that ambition tends only to disappointment and mortification, unless it meets with en-
