ture,
standing on the banks of the river, close by the site of an old
burial-ground, and near where an ancient fort had been erected for
defence against the French and Indians. General Knox once owned a square
of thirty miles in this part of the country; and he wished to settle it
with a tenantry, after the fashion of English gentlemen. He would permit
no edifice to be erected within a certain distance of his mansion. His
patent covered, of course, the whole present town of Thomaston, with
Waldoborough and divers other flourishing commercial and country
villages, and would have been of incalculable value could it have
remained unbroken to the present time. But the General lived in grand
style, and received throngs of visitors from foreign parts, and was
obliged to part with large tracts of his possessions, till now there is
little left but the ruinous mansion and the ground immediately around
it. His tomb stands near the house,--a spacious receptacle, an iron door
at the end of a turf-covered mound, and surmounted by an obelisk of the
Thomaston marble. There are inscriptions to the memory of several of his
family; for he had many children, all of whom are now dead, except one
daughter, a widow of fifty, recently married to Hon. John H----. There
is a stone fence round the monument. On the outside of this are
the gravestones, and large, flat tombstones of the ancient
burial-ground,--the tombstones being of red freestone, with vacant
spaces, formerly inlaid with slate, on which were the inscriptions, and
perhaps coats-of-arms. One of these spaces was in the shape of a heart.
The people of Thomaston were very wrathful that the General should have
laid out his grounds over this old burial-place; and he dared never
throw down the gravestones, though his wife, a haughty English lady,
often teased him to do so. But when the old General was dead, Lady Knox
(as they called her) caused them to be prostrated, as they now lie. She
was a woman of violent passions, and so proud an aristocrat, that, as
long as she lived, she would never enter any house in Thomaston except
her own. When a married daughter was ill, she used to go in her carriage
to the door, and send up to inquire how she did. The General was
personally very popular; but his wife ruled him. The house and its
vicinity, and the whole tract covered by Knox's patent, may be taken as
an illustration of what must be the result of American schemes of
aristocracy. It is not fort