MR. URBAN AND A COUNTRY HOUSE 



unceasing; and when I asked for a sketch of 

 its meandering over that broken surface, it 

 presented such an array of tame lines, and 

 meaningless curvatures and violent crooks as 

 to express nothing of the grace which on the 

 grounds themselves flowed over, and made 

 constant enchantment. 



A SUNNY HOUSE 



We will suppose that Mr. Urban is thoroughly 

 satisfied with his garden and grounds — that 

 he finds his newly planted trees growing apace 

 — that his Southdowns are all that an ac- 

 complished grazier could desire; but the old 

 house becomes at last a weariness. Not be- 

 cause it is old; nor yet because it is compara- 

 tively small — so small that he has to billet, 

 from time to time, a bachelor visitor in a little 

 loft of his tool-house; but it has no wide and 

 open frontage to the sun. He insists that the 

 new one, of which he projects the building out 

 of the rough material from his cliff, shall have 

 at least a glimpse of southern sunshine in every 

 habitable room below. 



"I am tired of the gloom of north ex- 

 posures," he writes; "wood-fires are very well, 



315 



