BOOK V.


CHAPTER I.

Envy will be a science when it learns the use of the microscope.

When leaves fall and flowers fade, great people are found in their
country-seats. Look!--that is Montfort Court,--a place of regal
magnificence, so far as extent of pile and amplitude of domain could
satisfy the pride of ownership, or inspire the visitor with the respect
due to wealth and power. An artist could have made nothing of it. The
Sumptuous everywhere; the Picturesque nowhere. The house was built in
the reign of George I., when first commenced that horror of the
beautiful, as something in bad taste, which, agreeably to our natural
love of progress, progressively advanced through the reigns of succeeding
Georges. An enormous fafade, in dull brown brick; two wings and a
centre, with double flights of steps to the hall-door from the
carriagesweep. No trees allowed to grow too near the house; in front, a
stately flat with stone balustrades. But wherever the eye turned, there
was nothing to be seen but park, miles upon miles of park; not a
cornfield in sight, not a roof-tree, not a spire, only those /lata
silentia/,--still widths of turf, and, somewhat thinly scattered and
afar, those groves of giant trees. The whole prospect so vast and so
monotonous that it never tempted you to take a walk. No close-
neighbouring poetic thicket into which to plunge, uncertain whither you
would emerge; no devious stream to follow. The very deer, fat and heavy,
seemed bored by pastures it would take them a week to traverse. People
of moderate wishes and modest fortunes never envied Montfort Court: they
admired it; they were proud to say they had seen it. But never did they