the old hall
rising like a statue of scorn above the intervening woods. There stood
the everlasting monument of the ancient family--there the emblem of
their pride, throwing its shadow, as it were, over his dawning
prosperity! But for that force of contrast thus afforded, he would
scarcely have perceived the newness of all the objects around him--the
glare of the fresh freestone--the nakedness of the whited walls. A few
stately old oaks and elms, apparently coeval with the ancient
structure, which a sort of religious feeling had preserved from the
axe, that they might afford congenial shade to the successor of its
founder, seemed to impart meanness and vulgarity to the tapering
verdure of _his_ plantations, his modern trees--his pert poplars and
mean larches--his sycamores and planes. Even the incongruity between
his solid new paling and the decayed and sun-bleached wood of the
venerable fence to which it adjoined, with its hoary beard of silvery
lichen, was an eyesore to him. Every passer-by might note the limit
and circumscription dividing the new place from the ancient seat of
the lords of the manor.

Yet was the landscape of Lexley Park one of almost unequalled beauty.
The Dee formed noble ornament to its sweeping valleys; while the noble
acclivities were clothed with promising woods, opening by rich vistas
to a wide extent of champaign country. A fine bridge of granite,
erected by the late Sir Windsor Altham, formed a noble object from the
windows of the new mansion; and but for the evidence of the venerable
pile, that stood like an abdicated monarch surveying its lost
dominions, there existed no external demonstration that Lexley Park
had not from the beginning of time formed the estated seat of the
Sparkses.

The neighbouring families, if "neighbouring" could be called certain
of the nobility and gentry who resided at ten miles' distance, were
courteously careful to inspire the new settler with a belief that they
at least had forgotten any antecedent state of things at Lexley; for
they had even reason to congratulate themselves on the change. Jonas
had long been strenuously active in the House of Commons in promoting
county improvements. Jonas was useful as a magistrate, and invaluable
as a liberal contributor to the local charities. During the first five
years of his occupancy, he did more for Lexley and its inhabitants
than the half-dozen previous baronets of the House of Altham.

Of the man he had superse