en the relict of the original
William. She stood like an ancient pillar, to point out where the
building it once belonged to was placed; and was looked upon by her
descendants pretty much as a native American looks upon a venerable
squaw of some Indian nation--the connecting link between New York and
the woods. The widow was the sole point of union left between
Surbridge Hall and Riches Court. Whether her grandson did not relish
the reminiscence, or from what cause no one can hazard more than a
guess, certain it is that on the death of his wife, who left him with
two daughters, four or five years old, he did not summon his venerable
ancestor from the Wells, but installed one of her daughters--Aunt
Susannah--in the temporary charge of his house. By some secret
arrangement, into the causes of which we have no time to enquire, such
a change took place in Aunt Susannah, that though she left Tunbridge,
having secured her place in the inside of the coach in the name of
Miss S. Wilkins, she was brought out from London in Mr Howard's
carriage in the name of Miss S. Gillingham; and there was no person of
the name of Wilkins in the whole of the establishment. Aunt Susannah
was not a person to hesitate long as to a change of name. It had been
the whole object of her life, till five-and-thirty years of
disappointment had almost made her despair of succeeding in her
object, by the help of special license or even vulgar banns; and she
accordingly made no scruple in adopting the more euphonious
Gillingham, and sinking all mention of the other. Mr Gillingham Howard
followed the example of his predecessors. He was a _bona fide_ country
gentleman, with the one drawback to his otherwise stupendous
respectability, of being the greatest drawer of the long-bow since the
days of Mendez Pinto. He added two feet more to the height of his
boundary walls, and bought all the disposable land round his estate;
but if he had transplanted a couple of miles of the Chinese wall to
Surbridge, he could no more have kept off the intrusion of the
barbarian villa-builders than the Celestials have been able to shut
out the same pushing, bustling, active, energetic, unabashable
individuals from the Flowery land. Architecture went on, and now the
gigantic city had stuck her arms so majestically on either hip, that
one of her elbows actually came into contact with the park of
Surbridge Hall. There was a gentle elevation--in those flat regions
honoured with the n