xii INTRODUCTION. 



It is a twisted, round- about, in-and-out sort of place, 

 our homestead. Such Robinson Crusoe contrivances 

 exhibited in the sheds, stables, storehouses, pens, ponds, 

 and appurtenances thereto. In part we found it so, in 

 part we made it so. It would have been perhaps, in some 

 respects better (pre-eminently as concerns our purse), to 

 have pulled down the old eccentric buildings altogether, 

 and have set them up anew on approved modern prin- 

 ciples. But we should not, I am convinced, have had 

 the enjoyment we have now. It is so much more 

 refreshing to pop in and out of all softs of unlikely 

 places, by unexpected doors and bridges, and sudden 

 short cuts, and find, here a finely-shaped colt or heifer, 

 there a sleek selection of symmetrical Black Diamond 

 porkers, here a wild-duck sitting, and there a hatch of 

 game fowl : all irregularly intennixed and mutually 

 helping to produce one charming general effect, as the 

 tinted worsteds of a Turkey carpet do. Personally, 

 beyond a doubt, it doth yield us a far more varied and 

 greater gratification in our daily, nay hourly, rambles of 

 inspection, than if the lines had been ruled severely in 

 accordance with modern improvement. Large spacious 

 bams, stone -tiled, and straw -thatched, with lancet 

 slits, and iron -stanchioned windows, yards of old- 

 fashioned type, high -walled and wide, suggesting all a 

 period when the owner's wealth was stored upon the 

 premises, and banks were yet unknown : when the 

 housewife spun amidst her handmaidens her lord's attire, 

 and all cloth for household use ; when the domestics were 

 bom and reared, and wrought and died, upon the pre- 

 mises ; and he was a travelled man who had been twenty 

 miles from the scene of his nativity : when the wines 

 and cake were all home-made, and the condiments- com- 



