concerns of her nursery. Unmindful of those tacit rebukes, in the excellent example she upheld, and equally so of the low ebbings of his purse, her husband indulged in the first place, as regarded herself and the object of their mutual affection, a liberality far surpassing his revenue. However, inconsiderate as was such a conduct, it was not so blameable as the indulgences of his own private tastes, ever varying with the whim or fashion of the times. If not a connoisseur, yet a professed admirer of the fine arts, each in its turn met with his unbounded encouragement. The artist, emerging from want and obscurity, owed to his timely patronage a future ease and celebrity. Painful to others was the reflection, that, while extending to the unfortunate the hand of friendly sympathy and support, he was insensibly, because inconsiderately, adding to their number. For himself, he seemed only bent on verifying the maxim, that generosity when carried to excess becomes a weakness.
Without minutely entering into a detail of his extravagances, suffice it, therefore, to say, that De Brooke, by an accumulation of debts and complete embarrassment of his affairs, was at last roused by the terror of his situation, in its fullest extent, to a sense of his great indiscretions; and
