izabeth. Few houses in England so old, indeed, as Fawley Manor
House. A vast weight of roof, with high gables; windows on the upper
story projecting far over the lower part; a covered porch with a coat
of half-obliterated arms deep panelled over the oak door. Nothing grand,
yet all how venerable! But what is this? Close beside the old, quiet,
unassuming Manor House rises the skeleton of a superb and costly
pile,--a palace uncompleted, and the work evidently suspended,--perhaps
long since, perhaps now forever. No busy workmen nor animated
scaffolding. The perforated battlements roofed over with visible
haste,--here with slate, there with tile; the Elizabethan mullion
casements unglazed; some roughly boarded across,--some with staring
forlorn apertures, that showed floorless chambers, for winds to whistle
through and rats to tenant. Weeds and long grass were growing over
blocks of stone that lay at hand. A wallflower had forced itself into
root on the sill of a giant oriel. The effect was startling. A fabric
which he who conceived it must have founded for posterity,--so solid
its masonry, so thick its walls,--and thus abruptly left to moulder;
a palace constructed for the reception of crowding guests, the pomp
of stately revels, abandoned to owl and bat. And the homely old house
beside it, which that lordly hall was doubtless designed to replace,
looking so safe and tranquil at the baffled presumption of its spectral
neighbour.

The driver had rung the bell, and now turning back to the chaise met
Lionel's inquiring eye, and said, "Yes; Squire Darrell began to build
that--many years ago--when I was a boy. I heerd say it was to be the
show-house of the whole county. Been stopped these ten or a dozen
years."

"Why?--do you know?"

"No one knows. Squire was a laryer, I b'leve: perhaps he put it into
Chancery. My wife's grandfather was put into Chancery jist as he was
growing up, and never grew afterwards: never got out o' it; nout ever
does. There's our churchwarden comes to me with a petition to sign agin
the Pope. Says I, 'That old Pope is always in trouble: what's he bin
doin' now?' Says he, 'Spreading! He's a-got into Parlyment, and he's now
got a colledge, and we pays for it. I does n't know how to stop him.'
Says I, 'Put the Pope into Chancery, along with wife's grandfather, and
he'll never spread agin.'"

The driver had thus just disposed of the Papacy, when an elderly servant
out of livery opened the door. Lionel