like stairs. Altogether, the shell to which, considered as a
crustaceous animal, I belonged--for man is every animal according as
you choose to contemplate him--had an old-world look about it--a look
of the time when men had to fight in order to have peace, to kill in
order to live. Being, however, a crustaceous animal, I, the heir of all
the new impulses of the age, was born and reared in closest
neighbourhood with strange relics of a vanished time. Humanity so far
retains its chief characteristics that the new generations can always
flourish in the old shell.

The dairy was at some distance, so deep in a hollow that a careless
glance would not have discovered it. I well remember my astonishment
when my aunt first took me there; for I had not even observed the
depression of surface: all had been a level green to my eyes. Beyond
this hollow were fields divided by hedges, and lanes, and the various
goings to and fro of a not unpeopled although quiet neighbourhood.
Until I left home for school, however, I do not remember to have seen a
carriage of any kind approach our solitary dwelling. My uncle would
have regarded it as little short of an insult for any one to drive
wheels over the smooth lawny surface in which our house dwelt like a
solitary island in the sea.

Before the threshold lay a brown patch, worn bare of grass, and beaten
hard by the descending feet of many generations. The stone threshold
itself was worn almost to a level with it. A visitor's first step was
into what would, in some parts, be called the house-place, a room which
served all the purposes of a kitchen, and yet partook of the character
of an old hall. It rose to a fair height, with smoke-stained beams
above; and was floored with a kind of cement, hard enough, and yet so
worn that it required a good deal of local knowledge to avoid certain