died out; and the city, like an old dowager who has
once been a beauty, and boasted of a waist, grew out of all shape.
There were squares and crescents rising in every quarter and the white
tops of chimneys, and the blue dinginess of roofs, became visible from
the upper windows of Surbridge Hall. The proprietor, terrified perhaps
by the approach of such neighbours, advertised the Hall for sale,
speedily found a purchaser, and, somewhere about the beginning of this
century, the old family name of the Walronds disappeared from the
country, and Surbridge Hall became the property of William Wilkins,
Esq. We may observe that, much about the same time, the name of the
senior partner disappeared from the door of a dingy-looking house in
Riches Court, and the firm of Wilkins & Roe was deprived of its larger
half. The old lion-rampant, that had stood on its hind-legs for so
many years on the top of one of the piers of the entrance gates, as if
in act to spring upon the deer that lay ruminating on the top of the
other, was now displaced; and, in a few days, his position was taken
by a plaster-of-Paris cast of Hebe, benevolently holding forth an
empty goblet towards the thirsty statue of Apollo which did duty on
the other side. The floors in the old hall were new laid, the windows
fitted with plate glass, the painting and decoration put into the
hands of a Bond-street finisher, who covered the walls with acres of
gilding, and hung chandeliers from the ceilings, and placed mirrors
upon the walls, till the rooms looked like the show galleries of an
upholsterer, and very different from the fine solid habitable
apartments they used to be in the time of the late proprietor. And a
change nearly as remarkable took place on Mr Wilkins himself as in his
house. He attended county meetings, and became learned in rents and
agriculture. He built new houses for his tenants, and only regretted
he had never learned to ride, or he would have followed the hounds.
But though he was no Nimrod, he dressed like one of his sons, and
encased his thick legs in top-boots, and generally carried a whip. At
last, by dint of good dinners, and voting on the right side at the
elections, he became a magistrate; and if Mrs Wilkins had had the
politeness to die, he would have married Lady Diana O'Huggomy, the
daughter of an Irish earl; but Mrs Wilkins did not die, and Lady Diana
ran away with a dancing-master. His son had been eighteen years at the
bar, and never ha