income was derived from summer visitors; its largest building was an
hotel, greatly frequented in summer; and its best houses were owned by
townspeople, who used them only at that season. That which gave
Chellaston a position and name above other places of the same size in
the country was an institution called "The New College," in which boys
up to the age of eighteen were given a higher education than could be
obtained at ordinary schools. The college was a square brick building,
not handsome, but commodious; and in the same enclosure with it were the
head-master's house, and a boarding-house in which the assistant-masters
lived with the pupils. With that love of grand terms which a new country
is apt to evince, the head-master was called "The Principal," and his
assistants "Professors." The New College was understood to have the
future of a university, but its present function was merely that of a
public school.

Chellaston was prettily situated by a well-wooded hill and a fair
flowing river. The college, with some fields that were cultivated for
its use, was a little apart from most of the houses, placed, both as to
physical and social position, between the commonplace village and the
farms of the undulating land around it; for, by a curious drift of
circumstances, the farms of this district were chiefly worked by English
gentlemen, whose families, in lieu of all other worldly advantage, held
the more stoutly by their family traditions. In doing so they were but
treasuring their only heirloom. And they did not expect to gain from the
near future any new source of pride; for it is not those who, as
convention terms it, are the best born who most easily gather again the
moss of prosperity when that which has been about them for generations
has once been removed. They were, indeed, a set of people who exhibited
more sweetness of nature than thrift. Elegance, even of the simplest
sort, was almost unknown in their homes, and fashion was a word that had