silence.

I have seen many fine places since then, but I do not remember to have
seen a landscape more beautiful in its peculiar English character than
that which I now gazed on. It had none of the feudal characteristics of
ancient parks, with giant oaks, fantastic pollards, glens covered with
fern, and deer grouped upon the slopes; on the contrary, in spite of
some fine trees, chiefly beech, the impression conveyed was, that it
was a new place,--a made place. You might see ridges on the lawns which
showed where hedges had been removed; the pastures were parcelled out in
divisions by new wire fences; young plantations, planned with exquisite
taste, but without the venerable formality of avenues and quin-cunxes,
by which you know the parks that date from Elizabeth and James,
diversified the rich extent of verdure; instead of deer, were
short-horned cattle of the finest breed, sheep that would have won the
prize at an agricultural show. Everywhere there was the evidence of
improvement, energy, capital, but capital clearly not employed for the
mere purpose of return. The ornamental was too conspicuously predominant
amidst the lucrative not to say eloquently: "The owner is willing to
make the most of his land, but not the most of his money."

But the old woman's eagerness to earn sixpence had impressed me
unfavorably as to the character of the master. "Here," thought I, "are
all the signs of riches; and yet this poor old woman, living on the very
threshold of opulence, is in want of a sixpence."

These surmises, in the indulgence of which I piqued myself on my
penetration, were strengthened into convictions by the few sentences
which I succeeded at last in eliciting from the old woman.

"Mr. Trevanion must be a rich man?" said I. "Oh, ay, rich eno'!"
grumbled my guide.

"And," said I, surveying the extent of shrubbery or dressed ground
through which our way wound, now emerging into lawns and glades, now
belted by rare garden-trees, now (as every inequality of the ground
was turned to advantage in the landscape) sinking into the dell, now
climbing up the slopes, and now confining the view to some object of
graceful art or enchanting Nature,--"and," said I, "he must employ many
hands here: plenty of work, eh?"

"Ay, ay! I don't say that he don't find work for those who want it. But
it ain't the same place it wor in my day."

"You remember it in other hands, then?"

"Ay, ay! When the Hogtons had it, honest folk! My g