may be summed up in a sentence:
hearing cases and granting warrants and licenses, and making out
commitments as justice; going through the woods to look after the
growth, and trimming, and felling of his trees; going out with his
keeper to reconnoitre the state of his covers and preserves; attending
quarter sessions; dining occasionally with the judge on circuit;
attending the county ball and the races; hunting and shooting, dining
and singing a catch or glee with Wagstaff and the parson over his port.
He has a large, dingy room, surrounded with dingy folios, and other
books in vellum bindings, which he calls his library. Here he sits as
justice; and here he receives his farmers on rent-days, and a wonderful
effect it has on their imaginations; for who can think otherwise than
that the squire must be a prodigious scholar, seeing all that array of
big books? And, in fact, the old squire is a great reader in his own
line. He reads the _Times_ daily; and he reads Gwillim's "Heraldry," the
"History of the Landed Gentry," Rapin's "History of England," and all
the works of Fielding, Richardson, and Sterne, whom he declares to be
the greatest writers England ever produced, or ever will produce.

But the old squire is not without his troubles. In his serious judgment
all the world is degenerating. The nation is running headlong to ruin.
"Lord, how different it was in my time!" is his constant exclamation.
The world is now completely turned topsy-turvy. Here is the Reform Bill,
the New Poor-law, which though it does make sharp work among the rogues
and vagabonds, yet has sorely shorn the authority of magistrates. Here
are the New Game-laws, Repeal of the Corn-laws, and the Navigation-laws;
new books, all trash and nonsense; and these harum-scarum railroads,
cutting up the country and making it dangerous to be riding out any
where. "Just," says he, "as a sober gentleman is riding quietly by the
side of his wood, bang! goes that 'hell-in-harness,' a steam-engine,
past. Up goes the horse, down goes the rider to a souse in the ditch,
and a broken collar bone."

Then all the world is now running all over the continent, learning all
sorts of Frenchified airs and fashions and notions, and beggaring
themselves into the bargain. He never set foot on the d--d, beggarly,
frog-eating Continent--not he! It was thought enough to live at home,
and eat good roast beef, and sing "God save the King," in his time; but
now a man is looked upon as