with me. By-and-by, withdrawing to a stone bench under an oak-tree, he
motioned to me to take a seat by his side. He said nothing, but appeared
to be quietly enjoying my undisguised surprise and admiration.

"A noble mansion!" I remarked at length to my venerable host, feeling,
Englishman-like, a sudden great access of respect towards the owner of a
big house. Men in such a position can afford to be as eccentric as they
like, even to the wearing of Carnivalesque garments, burying their
friends or relations in a park, and shaking their heads over such names
as Smith or Shakespeare. "A glorious place! It must have cost a pot of
money, and taken a long time to build."

"What you mean by _a pot of money_ I do not know," said he. "When
you add _a long time to build_, I am also puzzled to understand
you. For are not all houses, like the forest of trees, the human race,
the world we live in, eternal?"

"If they stand forever they are so in one sense, I suppose," I answered,
beginning to fear that I had already unfortunately broken the rule I had
so recently laid down for my own guidance. "But the trees of the forest,
to which you compare a house, spring from seed, do they not? and so have
a beginning. Their end also, like the end of man, is to die and return
to the dust."

"That is true," he returned; "it is, moreover, a truth which I do not
now hear for the first time; but it has no connection with the subject
we are discussing. Men pass away, and others take their places. Trees
also decay, but the forest does not die, or suffer for the loss of
individual trees; is it not the same with the house and the family
inhabiting it, which is one with the house, and endures forever, albeit