fascination, I felt about Buckler Park. My
questions he answered, nothing loth. It was
comical to watch the struggle between Clipper's
loyalty to his clients' county hatreds
and the sacred awe with which he looked on
every millionnaire. "Well," I would say,
"and how does the new man get on at Riverport?"

"O! awful, upon my word! A complete
radical—a leveller—no respect for anything
ancient—don't understand the feeling of the
poor people—and has brought his detestable
manufacturing notions into the county."

"Indeed! how's that—going to stand for
the county on a programme of the Red
Republic?"

"O no, nonsense! But you see, he won't
leave anything alone. Not left a vestige of
the old place, and brought all new people on
the farm; interferes in the parish school;
wants all sorts of new-fangled notions to be
taught there. With this education, we sha'n't
have a servant soon. Won't let the poor
fellows work in the way they've been accustomed,
got a foreigner for a bailiff, and set
up a manufactory on the bank of the river."

"What, on the old brickfield? Why, I
thought you sold up the last tenant of that
brick-field for his rent?"

"Well," said Clipper, "it's no use talking
to you. However, I assure you it's very
aggravating to have a new man coming down
among some of the oldest families in England,
showing off his money—though, to be sure,
the poor's-rates are very much reduced. Confound
it, I can't go into the town without
hearing of some one wanting an order to see
Buckley Hall, and talking about the pictures
and the statues, and the library, and the
aviary, and the conservatory, and the model
cottages, and the new school—hang his
impudence! Why, sir, I've heard my father
say that, in his time, no one under the rank of
a peer, or a prime minister, or at any rate a
very old baronet, presumed to have a picture-gallery.
The model cottages are the worst of
all, to make all our people dissatisfied; and
schools where—'pon my soul, you won't
believe it—they teach even singing and
drawing. They'll have a piano in every
cottage, next. But that's not the worst. You
see, money will do anything nowadays; so
they've put the new man into the commission
of the peace, and made him a deputy-lieutenant.
You see, our people are obliged
to be civil, for the new man's a sort of
favourite with Lord Browndown and the Earl
of Domperley. To be sure, since he's been
there, the shooting is very good at Buckley
Park; the cock-shooting in his new plantations
by the river is famous after a frost, and
he has an uncommon good notion of managing
the woods; I must own that. So he does somehow
manage to get very good society. Why,
my client, Squire Thicksedde (theThickseddes
have lived on their own estate since the time
of Henry the Eighth) was persuaded by his
wife—who wanted to see the Hall there was
so much talk about—to accept an invitation
to a shooting-party; and he wanted to know
how the new man managed to grow such
crops of turnips. You'll scarcely believe it—
but it's true, upon my word he sat next at
dinner to two men, and had a good deal of
talk with them; and you'll never guess who
they turned out to be, for Earl Domperley and
Bumptious, M.P. for the county, were there.
Why, one was a painter, a fellow that does
pictures for a living; and the other a newspaper
man, and writes those vile things about
the magistrates and the aristocracy. It was
Mrs. Thicksedde who found it out, and you
may imagine how shocked she was; for it was
she who turned her back on her favourite
niece for marrying a cotton-spinner—a rich
man, too!"

"And who," I inquired, "is this horrid
new man?"

"O! it's Mr. Wagerman; he was an engineer,
they tell me, or a stoker, or something
of that sort once; but now he owns coal mines
and all sorts of things. Rather a gentlemanly
man, I must admit, and has a capital cellar of
wine, but a perfect revolutionist."

After this conversation, I was not sorry to
have an opportunity of paying a second visit
to Riverport. An invitation from Splinter
to try the partridge-shooting of one of his
patient's farms in September, gave me an
opportunity of comparing past and present—
the old squire and the new man.

A branch railroad—another of the innovations
due to the dreadful Mr. Wagerman
—brought me within a couple of miles
of Riverport. As we descended the steep
side of the beautiful valley, Buckleigh Park
in the distance seemed unchanged; the noble
trees, waved their broad arms above the turf
as of old; but green patches of young
flourishing plantations, stretching over scores of
acres, covered hill-sides formerly bare and
barren. So soon as we skirted the park,
the well-built wall, the neat lodges, new
clumps of ornamental trees, the healthy
verdure of well-cultivated turf, fed over by
beautiful cattle, gave signs of wealth, taste,
and agricultural progress.

A broad straight drive through ancient trees
brought to view the new hall—built of a cool
grey stone, quarried close at hand—somewhat
in the Elizabethan style, but without slavish
absurdity of details; with a central tower and
wings, in style and colour far more ancient
than the hideous building it had replaced.
Nearer approach gave to view a long stately
terrace, adorned with vases of marble filled
with flowers, and statues in bronze. Turf
banks, with brilliant flower-beds, contrasted
with the carved stone buttresses. At either
extremity, trees, that had seen beneath their
boughs many generations of De Buckleighs,
completed the picture. In front, a herd of
mottled fallow-deer, with here and there a
black buck and a white doe, cropped the