say--

"Oh, that for me some home like this would smile!"

Not so, very, very great people!--they rather coveted than admired.
Those oak trees so large, yet so undecayed; that park, eighteen miles at
least in circumference; that solid palace which, without inconvenience,
could entertain and stow away a king and his whole court; in short, all
that evidence of a princely territory and a weighty rent-roll made
English dukes respectfully envious, and foreign potentates gratifyingly
jealous.

But turn from the front. Open the gate in that stone balustrade. Come
southward to the garden side of the house. Lady Montfort's flower-
garden. Yes; not so dull!--flowers, even autumnal flowers, enliven any
sward. Still, on so large a scale, and so little relief; so little
mystery about those broad gravel-walks; not a winding alley anywhere.
Oh, for a vulgar summer-house; for some alcove, all honeysuckle and ivy!
But the dahlias are splendid! Very true; only, dahlias, at the best, are
such uninteresting prosy things. What poet ever wrote upon a dahlia!
Surely Lady Montfort might have introduced a little more taste here,
shown a little more fancy! Lady Montfort! I should like to see my
lord's face if Lady Montfort took any such liberty. But there is Lady
Montfort walking slowly along that broad, broad, broad gravel-walk; those
splendid dahlias, on either side, in their set parterres. There she
walks, in full evidence from all those sixty remorseless windows on the
garden front, each window exactly like the other. There she walks,
looking wistfully to the far end ('t is a long way off), where, happily,
there is a wicket that carries a persevering pedestrian out of sight of
the sixty windows into shady walks, towards the banks of that immense