s the satisfaction of seeing
all the poachers transported beyond the seas. The county jail and the
house of correction are particular pets of his. He admires even their
architecture, and prides himself especially on the size and massiveness
of the prison. He used to extend his fondness even to the stocks; but
the treadmill, almost the only modern thing which has wrought such a
miracle, has superseded it in his affections, and the ancient stocks now
stand deserted, and half lost in a bed of nettles; but he still looks
with a gracious eye on the parish pound, and returns the pinder's touch
of his hat with a marked attention, looking upon him as one of the most
venerable appendages of antique institutions.

Of course the old squire loves the church. Why, it is ancient, and that
is enough of itself; but, beside that, all the wisdom of his ancestors
belonged to it. His great-great-uncle was a bishop; his wife's
grandfather was a dean; he has the presentation of the living, which is
now in the hands of his brother Ned; and he has himself all the great
tithes which, in the days of popery, belonged to it. He loves it all the
better, because he thinks that the upstart dissenters want to pull it
down; and he hates all upstarts. And what! Is it not the church of the
queen, and the ministers, and all the nobility, and of all the old
families? It is the only religion for a gentleman, and, therefore, it is
his religion. Would the dissenting minister hob-nob with him as
comfortably over the after-dinner bottle as Ned does, and play a rubber
as comfortably with him, and let him swear a comfortable oath now and
then? 'Tis not to be supposed. Besides, of what family is this
dissenting minister? Where does he spring from? At what university did
he graduate? 'Twon't do for the old squire. No! the clerk, the sexton,
and the very churchwardens of the time being, partake, in his eye, of
the time-tried sanctity of the good old church, and are bound up in the
bundle of his affections.

These are a few of the old squire's likings and antipathies, which are
just as much part of himself, as the entail is of his inheritance. But
we shall see yet more of them when we come to see more of him and his
abode. The old squire is turned of threescore, and every thing is old
about him. He lives in an old house in the midst of an old park, which
has a very old wall, end gates so old, that though they are made of oak
as hard as iron, they begin to stoop in t