the peculiarly dingy and weather-stained appearance of the small finely-
finished bricks, of which the habitation was built,--all showed the abode
of former generations adapted with tasteless irreverence to the habits of
descendants unenlightened by Pugin, or indifferent to the poetry of the
past. The house had emerged suddenly upon Frank out of the gloomy waste
land, for it was placed in a hollow, and sheltered from sight by a
disorderly group of ragged, dismal, valetudinarian fir-trees, until an
abrupt turn of the road cleared that screen, and left the desolate abode
bare to the discontented eye. Frank dismounted; the man held his pony;
and after smoothing his cravat, the smart Etonian sauntered up to the
door, and startled the solitude of the place with a loud peal from the
modern brass knocker,--a knock which instantly brought forth an
astonished starling who had built under the eaves of the gable roof, and
called up a cloud of sparrows, tomtits, and yellow-hammers, who had been
regaling themselves amongst the litter of a slovenly farmyard that lay in
full sight to the right of the house, fenced off by a primitive paintless
wooden rail. In process of time a sow, accompanied by a thriving and
inquisitive family, strolled up to the gate of the fence, and, leaning
her nose on the lower bar of the gate, contemplated the visitor with much
curiosity and some suspicion.

While Frank is still without, impatiently swingeing his white trousers
with his whip, we will steal a hurried glance towards the respective
members of the family within. Mr. Leslie, the paterfamilias, is in a
little room called his "study," to which he regularly retires every
morning after breakfast, rarely reappearing till one o'clock, which is
his unfashionable hour for dinner. In what mysterious occupations Mr.
Leslie passes those hours no one ever formed a conjecture. At the
present moment he is seated before a little rickety bureau, one leg of
which being shorter than the other is propped up by sundry old letters