sition there is little room to doubt, that if need required, this noble creature would have cheerfully undergone death, rather than that the interests of those he so dearly loved and respected should have received through any fault of his detriment or compromise.
To return to Mrs. De Brooke; though herself innocent of the cause, it might truly be said that poverty had come upon her as one that travelleth, and want as an armed man*[1]. But it was not until the last resources had failed, that her condition became bewildering in the extreme, and all the terrors that can afflict virtue appeared in array against her. Surrounded by inextricable difficulties, and to which every hour threatened some fearful addition, bereft of the solace of conjugal sympathy, while there scarcely remained an earthly refuge which hope could suggest or despair embrace, what could have supported her under such complicated trial, but a meek surrender of herself and the dear objects of her continual solicitude to the Supreme Disposer of events! Bending at his omnipresent shrine, she would often fervently implore the Divine mercy to grant her in its own good time deliverance, and a patient endurance of the ills
- ↑ * Proverbs.
