bestowed on the accommodation of the cottagers forcibly struck me. I felt
that I was on the lands of a rich, intelligent, and beneficent proprietor.
Entering the park, and passing before the manor-house, the contrast
between the neglect and the decay of the absentee's stately Hall and the
smiling homes of his villagers was disconsolately mournful.

An imposing pile, built apparently by Vanbrugh, with decorated pilasters,
pompous portico, and grand perron (or double flight of stairs to the
entrance), enriched with urns and statues, but discoloured, mildewed,
chipped, half-hidden with unpruned creepers and ivy. Most of the windows
were closed with shutters, decaying for want of paint; in some of the
casements the panes were broken; the peacock perched on the shattered
balustrade, that fenced a garden overgrown with weeds. The sun glared
hotly on the place, and made its ruinous condition still more painfully
apparent. I was glad when a winding in the park-road shut the house from
my sight. Suddenly I emerged through a copse of ancient yew-trees, and
before me there gleamed, in abrupt whiteness, a building evidently
designed for the family mausoleum, classical in its outline, with the
blind iron door niched into stone walls of massive thickness, and
surrounded by a funereal garden of roses and evergreens, fenced with an
iron rail, party-gilt.

The suddenness with which this House of the Dead came upon me heightened
almost into pain, if not into awe, the dismal impression which the aspect
of the deserted home in its neighbourhood had made. I spurred my horse,
and soon arrived at the door of my patient, who lived in a fair brick
house at the other extremity of the park.

I found my patient, a man somewhat advanced in years, but of a robust
conformation, in bed: he had been seized with a fit, which was supposed to