Before she showed the company any farther, she said, she must premise
to his lordship, that she had been originally stinted in room for
her improvements, so that she could not follow her genius liberally;
she had been reduced to have some things on a confined scale, and
occasionally to consult her pocket-compass; but she prided herself
upon having put as much into a tight pattern as could well be;
that had been her whole ambition, study, and problem; for she was
determined to have at least the honour of having a little _taste_ of
every thing at Tusculum.

So she led the way to a little conservatory, and a little pinery, and
a little grapery, and a little aviary, and a little pheasantry, and a
little dairy for show, and a little cottage for ditto, with a grotto
full of shells, and a little hermitage full of earwigs, and a little
ruin full of looking-glass, "to enlarge and multiply the effect of the
Gothic."--"But you could only put your head in, because it was just
fresh painted, and though there had been a fire ordered in the ruin
all night, it had only smoked."

In all Mrs. Raffarty's buildings, whether ancient or modern, there was
a studied crookedness.

Yes, she said, she hated every thing straight, it was so formal and
_unpicturesque_. "Uniformity and conformity," she observed, "had their
day; but now, thank the stars of the present day, irregularity and
deformity bear the bell, and have the majority."

As they proceeded and walked through the grounds, from which Mrs.
Raffarty, though she had done her best, could not take that which
nature had given, she pointed out to my lord "a happy moving