style.

Round the house there were trim gardens, not very large, but worthy
of much note in that they were so trim,--gardens with broad gravel
paths, with one walk running in front of the house so broad as to
be fitly called a terrace. But this, though in front of the house,
was sufficiently removed from it to allow of a coach-road running
inside it to the front door. The Dales of Allington had always been
gardeners, and their garden was perhaps more noted in the county than
any other of their properties. But outside the gardens no pretensions
had been made to the grandeur of a domain. The pastures round the
house were but pretty fields, in which timber was abundant. There was
no deer-park at Allington; and though the Allington woods were well
known, they formed no portion of a whole of which the house was a
part. They lay away, out of sight, a full mile from the back of
the house; but not on that account of less avail for the fitting
preservation of foxes.

And the house stood much too near the road for purposes of grandeur,
had such purposes ever swelled the breast of any of the squires of
Allington. But I fancy that our ideas of rural grandeur have altered
since many of our older country seats were built. To be near the
village, so as in some way to afford comfort, protection, and
patronage, and perhaps also with some view to the pleasantness of
neighbourhood for its own inmates, seemed to be the object of a
gentleman when building his house in the old days. A solitude in the
centre of a wide park is now the only site that can be recognised as
eligible. No cottage must be seen, unless the cottage _orné_ of the
gardener. The village, if it cannot be abolished, must be got out of
sight. The sound of the church bells is not desirable, and the road