solation in some other alliance. Nevertheless he did not
do so: he became a confirmed invalid, and died single, leaving to his
sister all in his power to save from the distant kinsman who succeeded
to his lands and title,--a goodly sum, which not only sufficed to pay
off the mortgages on Neesdale Park but bestowed on its owner a surplus
which the practical knowledge of country life that he had acquired
enabled him to devote with extraordinary profit to the general
improvement of his estate. He replaced tumble-down old farm buildings
with new constructions on the most approved principles; bought or
pensioned off certain slovenly incompetent tenants; threw sundry petty
holdings into large farms suited to the buildings he constructed;
purchased here and there small bits of land, commodious to the farms
they adjoined, and completing the integrity of his ring-fence; stubbed
up profitless woods which diminished the value of neighbouring arables
by obstructing sun and air and harbouring legions of rabbits; and
then, seeking tenants of enterprise and capital, more than doubled his
original yearly rental, and perhaps more than tripled the market value
of his property. Simultaneously with this acquisition of fortune, he
emerged from the inhospitable and unsocial obscurity which his previous
poverty had compelled, took an active part in county business, proved
himself an excellent speaker at public meetings, subscribed liberally to
the hunt, and occasionally joined in it,--a less bold but a wiser rider
than of yore. In short, as Themistocles boasted that he could make a
small state great, so Leopold Travers might boast with equal truth,
that, by his energies, his judgment, and the weight of his personal
character, he had made the owner of a property which had been at
his accession to it of third-rate rank in the county a personage so
considerable that no knight of the shire against whom he declared could
have been elected, and if he had determined to stand himself he would
have been chosen free of expense.

But he said, on being solicited to become a candidate, "When a man once
gives himself up to the care and improvement of a landed estate, he
has no time and no heart for anything else. An estate is an income or
a kingdom, according as the owner chooses to take it. I take it as a
kingdom, and I cannot be _roi faineant_, with a steward for _maire du
palais_. A king does not go into the House of Commons."

Three years after this r