This eBook was produced by David Widger
Primitive character of the country in certain districts of Great Britain.—Connection between the features of surrounding scenery and the mental and moral inclinations of man, after the fashion of all sound ethnological historians.—A charioteer, to whom an experience of British laws suggests an ingenious mode of arresting the progress of Roman Papacy, carries Lionel Haughton and his fortunes to a place which allows of description and invites repose.
In safety, but with naught else rare enough, in a railway train, todeserve commemoration, Lionel reached the station to which he was bound.He there inquired the distance to Fawley Manor House; it was five miles.He ordered a fly, and was soon wheeled briskly along a rough parish road,through a country strongly contrasting the gay river scenery he had solately quitted,—quite as English, but rather the England of a formerrace than that which spreads round our own generation like one vastsuburb of garden-ground and villas. Here, nor village nor spire, norporter's lodge came in sight. Rare even were the cornfields; wide spacesof unenclosed common opened, solitary and primitive, on the road,bordered by large woods, chiefly of beech, closing the horizon withridges of undulating green. In such an England, Knights Templars mighthave wended their way to scattered monasteries, or fugitive partisans inthe bloody Wars of the Roses have found shelter under leafy coverts.
The scene had its romance, its beauty-half savage, half gentle-leadingperforce the mind of any cultivated and imaginative gazer far back fromthe present day, waking up long-forgotten passages from old poets. Thestillness of such wastes of sward, such deeps of woodland, induced thenurture of revery, gravely soft and lulling. There, Ambition might giverest to the wheel of Ixion, Avarice to the sieve of the Danaids; there,disappointed Love might muse on the brevity of all human passions, andcount over the tortured hearts that have found peace in holy meditation,or are now stilled under grassy knolls. See where, at the crossing ofthree roads upon the waste, the landscape suddenly unfolds, an upland inthe distance, and on the upland a building, the first sign of social man.What is the building? only a silenced windmill, the sails dark and sharpagainst the dull leaden sky.
Lionel touched the driver,—"Are we yet on Mr. Darrell's property?" Ofthe extent of that property he had involuntarily conceived a vast idea.
"Lord, sir, no; we be two miles from Squire Darrell's. He han't muchproperty to speak of hereabouts. But he bought a good bit o' land, too,some years ago, ten or twelve mile t' other side o' the county. Firsttime you are going to Fawley, sir?"
"Yes."
"Ah! I don't mind seeing you afore; and I should have known you if Ihad, for it is seldom indeed I have a fare to Fawley old Manor House. Itmust be, I take it, four or five years ago sin' I wor there with a gent,and he went away while I wor feeding the horse; did me out o' my backfare. What bisness had he to walk when he came in my fly? Shabby."
"Mr. Darrell lives very retired, then? sees few persons?" "S'pose so.I never seed him as I knows on; see'd two o' his hosses though,—raregood uns;" and the driver whipped on his own horse, took to whistling,and Lionel asked no more.
At length the chaise stopped at a carriage gate, receding from the road,and deeply shadowed by venerable trees,—no lodge. The driver,dismounting, opened the gate.