and render her to himself as well as to his children an example and solace.
Such were the meditations of De Brooke, when his paternal sight was gratified by the appearance of his daughters. They had just returned from their evening's walk. He met them with cheerfulness, and giving an arm to each they continued their ramble. The endearing smiles and sweet welcome with which he had been greeted imparted peace to his lacerated bosom; and whilst his soul expanded with the sense of moral obligation and submission to the Divine will, he breathed forth the dictates of parental fondness to his children, in advice for their welfare through the chequered scenes of mortal existence, verifying by his own experience the precariousness of all earthly things.
He then proceeded to tell, or rather to confirm to them what they had before learnt, that his reduced income was insufficient for the many accumulated expenses of the villa, and that it was only adequate to a pleasant retirement, where they might exist free from the gaze of a prying world, in leaving which, he endeavoured to persuade them, they had nothing to regret,
"The world's infectious; few bring back at eve,
Immaculate, the manners of the morn."
