mind as he paced his horse slowly
through the rugged and flinty street of Tully-Veolan, interrupted
only in his meditations by the occasional caprioles which his charger
exhibited at the reiterated assaults of those canine Cossacks, the
COLLIES before mentioned. The village was more than half a mile long,
the cottages being irregularly divided from each other by gardens, or
yards, as the inhabitants called them, of different sizes, where (for
it is Sixty Years since) the now universal potato was unknown, but which
were stored with gigantic plants of KALE or colewort, encircled with
groves of nettles, and exhibited here and there a huge hemlock, or the
national thistle, overshadowing a quarter of the petty enclosure. The
broken ground on which the village was built had never been levelled; so
that these enclosures presented declivities of every degree, here rising
like terraces, there sinking like tan-pits. The dry-stone walls which
fenced, or seemed to fence (for they were sorely breached), these
hanging gardens of Tully-Veolan, were intersected by a narrow lane
leading to the common field, where the joint labour of the villagers
cultivated alternate ridges and patches of rye, oats, barley, and peas,
each of such minute extent, that at a little distance the unprofitable
variety of the surface resembled a tailor's book of patterns. In a
few favoured instances, there appeared behind the cottages a miserable
wigwam, compiled of earth, loose stones, and turf, where the wealthy
might perhaps shelter a starved cow or sorely galled horse. But almost
every hut was fenced in front by a huge black stack of turf on one side
of the door, while on the other the family dung-hill ascended in noble
emulation.

About a bow-shot from the end of the village appeared the enclosures,
proudly denominated the Parks of Tully-Veolan, being certain square
fields, surrounded and divided by stone walls five feet in height. In
the centre of the exterior barrier was the upper gate of the avenue,
opening under an archway, battlemented on the top, and adorned with two
large weather-beaten mutilated masses of upright stone, which, if the
tradition of the hamlet could be trusted, had once represented, at least
had been once designed to represent, two rampant Bears, the supporters
of the family of Bradwardine. This avenue was straight, and of moderate
length, running between a double row of very ancient horse-chestnuts,
planted alternately with sycamores