X
Which sloping hills around inclose,
Where many a beech and brown oak grows
Beneath whose dark and branching bowers
Its tides a far-fam'd river pours,
By natures beauties taught to please,
Sweet Tusculan of rural easel

WARTON.

Woodbourne, the habitation which Mannering, by Mr. Mac-Morlan's
mediation, had hired for a season, was a large comfortable mansion,
snugly situated beneath a hill covered with wood, which shrouded the
house upon the north and east; the front looked upon a little lawn
bordered by a grove of old trees; beyond were some arable fields,
extending down to the river, which was seen from the windows of the
house. A tolerable, though old-fashioned garden, a well-stocked dove-cot,
and the possession of any quantity of ground which the convenience of the
family might require, rendered the place in every respect suitable, as
the advertisements have it, 'for the accommodation of a genteel family.'

Here, then, Mannering resolved, for some time at least, to set up the
staff of his rest. Though an East-Indian, he was not partial to an
ostentatious display of wealth. In fact, he was too proud a man to be a
vain one. He resolved, therefore, to place himself upon the footing of a
country gentleman of easy fortune, without assuming, or permitting his
household to assume, any of the faste which then was considered as
characteristic of a nabob.

He had still his eye upon the purchase of Ellangowan, which Mac-Morlan
conceived Mr. Glossin would be compelled to part with, as some of the
creditors disputed his title to retain so large a part of the
purchase-money in his own hands, and his power to pay it was much
questioned. In that case Mac-Morlan was assured he would readily give up
his bargain, if tempted with something above the price which he had
stipulated to pay. It may seem strange that Mannering was so much
attached to a spot which he had only seen once, and that for a short
time, in early life. But the circumstances which passed there had laid a
strong hold on his imagination. There seemed to be a fate which conjoined
the remarkable passages of his own family history with those of the
inhabitants of Ellangowan, and he felt a mysterious desire to call the
terrace his own from which he had read in the book of heaven a fortune
strangely accomplished in the person of the infant heir of that family,
and corresponding so closely with one which had been strikingly fulf