 laces, that it was necessary to hire a vessel to smuggle them over, and this
vessel was taken by a custom-house cutter; so that they lost the whole cargo,
which had cost them above eight hundred pounds.
    It now appeared, that her travels had produced no effect upon her, but that
of making her more expensive and fantastic than ever: - She affected to lead the
fashion, not only in point of female dress, but in every article of taste and
connoisseurship. She made a drawing of the new façade to the house in the
country; she pulled up the trees, and pulled down the walls of the garden, so as
to let in the easterly wind, which Mr. Baynard's ancestors had been at great
pains to exclude. To shew her taste in laying out ground, she seized into her
own hand a farm of two hundred acres, about a mile from the house, which she
parcelled out into walks and shrubberies, having a great bason in the middle,
into which she poured a whole stream that turned two mills, and afforded the
best trout in the country. The bottom of the bason, however, was so ill secured,
that it would not hold the water, which strained through the earth, and made a
bog of the whole plantation: in a word, the ground which formerly paid him one
hundred and fifty pounds a year, now cost him two hundred pounds a year to keep
it in tolerable order, over and above the first expence of trees, shrubs,
flowers, turf, and gravel. There was not an inch of garden-ground left about the
house, nor a tree that produced fruit of any kind; nor did he raise a truss of
hay, or a bushel of oats for his horses, nor had he a single cow to afford milk
for his tea; far less did he ever dream of feeding his own mutton, pigs, and
poultry: every article of house-keeping, even the most inconsiderable, was
brought from the next market town, at the distance of five miles, and thither
they sent a courier every morning to fetch hot rolls for breakfast. In short,
Baynard fairly owned that he spent double his income, and that in a few years he
should be obliged to sell his estate for the payment of his creditors. He said
his wife had such delicate nerves, and such imbecillity of spirit, that she
could neither bear remonstrance, be it ever so gentle, nor practise any scheme
of retrenchment, even if she perceived the necessity of such a measure. He had
therefore
