in
life; but it also indicated narrowness of spirit, inveterate prejudice,
and hinted at some degree of intolerance, which, though not natural to
the disposition, had arisen out of a limited education. The passages
from Scripture and the classics, rather profusely than happily
introduced, and written in a half-text character to mark their
importance, illustrated that peculiar sort of pedantry which always
considers the argument as gained if secured by a quotation. Then the
flourished capital letters, which ornamented the commencement of each
paragraph, and the names of his family and of his ancestors whenever
these occurred in the page, do they not express forcibly the pride and
sense of importance with which the author undertook and accomplished
his task? I persuaded myself the whole was so complete a portrait of the
man, that it would not have been a more undutiful act to have defaced
his picture, or even to have disturbed his bones in his coffin, than to
destroy his manuscript. I thought, for a moment, of presenting it to
Mr. Fairscribe; but that confounded passage about the prodigal and
swine-trough--I settled at last it was as well to lock it up in my own
bureau, with the intention to look at it no more.

But I do not know how it was, that the subject began to sit nearer my
heart than I was aware of, and I found myself repeatedly engaged in
reading descriptions of farms which were no longer mine, and boundaries
which marked the property of others. A love of the NATALE SOLUM, if
Swift be right in translating these words, "family estate," began to
awaken in my bosom--the recollections of my own youth adding little to
it, save what was connected with field-sports. A career of pleasure is
unfavourable for acquiring a taste for natural beauty, and still more so
for forming associations of a sentimental kind, connecting us with the
inanimate objects around us.

I had thought little about my estate while I possessed and was wasting
it, unless as affording the rude materials out of which a certain
inferior race of creatures, called tenants, were bound to produce (in a
greater quantity than they actually did) a certain return called rent,
which was destined to supply my expenses. This was my general view of
the matter. Of particular places, I recollected that Garval Hill was
a famous piece of rough upland pasture for rearing young colts, and
teaching them to throw their feet; that Minion Burn had the finest
yellow trout i