LORD EVERGREEN 227 



ness stretches itself out, and grandeur has room to 

 shake and show itself. Indeed, we believe there 

 is more uniform state — more constant show m the 

 country than in London, where recent years have 

 confined the state equipages and liveries to levee 

 and drawing-room days. Greatness has been cropped 

 a good deal, too, by the introduction of railways. 

 Coach and four succeeding coach and four, and 

 saddle and carriage horses, accompanying servants' 

 van, all tended to keep up the character and im- 

 portance of the English nobleman. Now they are 

 put on a truck and tacked to the tail of a train, with 

 little more ceremony than attends the transit of Mr. 

 Flatcatcher's race-horse, or Mr. Bullocksmithy's fat 

 ox. The utilitarians will tell you that it is all the 

 better, but we don't know that it is for all that. 

 Some one said " there had been ten men hung for 

 every inch they had curtailed in the judge's wig," 

 and state — even on the road — was not without its 

 advantages. To be sure the public style of travelling 

 favours intercourse with the world and knowledge 

 of life ; but, as we said before, there is no better 

 place than the hunting field for acquiring that. How- 

 ever, railroads are now the universal mode of travelling, 

 and my Lord Duke and family, who formerly made 

 a grand progress though England of many days — 

 travelling with a retinue as long as Polito's or Womb- 

 well's menageries — now whisk from one end of the 

 kingdom to the other in the liberal limits of a summer's 

 day. 



Let us look at a nobleman "at home," as 

 Mathews used to say of himself. 



What a world in miniature a nobleman's castle is. 

 Placed in nature's choicest, sunniest spot, it looks 

 upon all the luxuries, necessaries, and enjoyments 

 of life ; waving corn-fields rise beyond the park — 

 herds of deer are scattered over it — the many-coloured 

 and scarcely less picturesque little wild Scotch kyloes 



