y and their
mansions now stood to each other.

Before the Civil War, the superb battlements and turrets of Martindale
Castle looked down on the red brick-built Hall, as it stole out from the
green plantations, just as an oak in Martindale Chase would have looked
beside one of the stunted and formal young beech-trees with which
Bridgenorth had graced his avenue; but after the siege which we have
commemorated, the enlarged and augmented Hall was as much predominant in
the landscape over the shattered and blackened ruins of the Castle, of
which only one wing was left habitable, as the youthful beech, in all
its vigour of shoot and bud, would appear to the same aged oak stripped
of its boughs, and rifted by lightning, one-half laid in shivers on the
ground, and the other remaining a blackened and ungraceful trunk, rent
and splintered, and without either life or leaves. Sir Geoffrey could
not but feel, that the situation and prospects were exchanged as
disadvantageously for himself as the appearance of their mansions; and
that though the authority of the man in office under the Parliament,
the sequestrator, and the committeeman, had been only exerted for the
protection of the Cavalier and the malignant, they would have been as
effectual if applied to procure his utter ruin; and that he was become a
client, while his neighbour was elevated into a patron.

There were two considerations, besides the necessity of the case and
the constant advice of his lady, which enabled Peveril of the Peak to
endure, with some patience, this state of degradation. The first
was, that the politics of Major Bridgenorth began, on many points, to
assimilate themselves to his own. As a Presbyterian, he was not an utter
enemy to monarchy, and had been considerably shocked at the unexpected
trial and execution of the King; as a civilian and a man of property, he
feared the domination of the military; and though he wished not to see
Charles restored by force of arms, yet he arrived at the conclusion,
that to bring back the heir of the royal family on such terms of
composition as might ensure the protection of those popular immunities
and privileges for which the Long Parliament had at first contended,
would be the surest and most desirable termination to the mutations in
state affairs which had agitated Britain. Indeed, the Major's ideas
on this point approached so nearly those of his neighbour, that he had
well-nigh suffered Sir Geoffrey, who had a f