LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 119 



fact will possibly let out the long-concealed secret, touching the 

 gun and the minor arms. After the fatal battle of Culloden, our 

 house was ransacked for arms, by an officer sent hither on the part 

 of Government. When the inmates of the house saw, with anger, 

 what was going on, I can easily fancy that they would do all in 

 their power to baffle the Government intruder ; and that they then 

 took their opportunity of hurling, into the lake below, what arms 

 they could lay hold of the swivel cannon amongst the rest. How 

 varied is the turn of fortune ! Success in battle, or the want of it, 

 makes a man a patriot or a rebel. My family, solely on account of 

 its conservative principles, and of its unshaken loyalty in the cause 

 of royal hereditary rights, was, by the failure at Culloden's bloody 

 field, declared to be rebellious ; and its members had to suffer con- 

 fiscation, persecution, and imprisonment. It had the horror to see, 

 in a foregoing century, a Dutchman declared the sovereign lord of all 

 Great Britain ; and subsequently, Hanoverian princes, and Hano- 

 verian rats, called over from the continent in order to fatten on our 

 fertile plains of England." 



As Waterton anticipated, the remainder of his tranquil existence 

 did not furnish any events which could tempt him to renew the 

 record of the mellow autumn of his days. But to complete the 

 sketch, it is necessary that we should follow him into his home, and 

 give some account of Walton Hall, and the life he led there. The 

 house is situated in a valley on a plot of ground, or little island, 

 which is surrounded by the ancient moat, enlarged into a lake 

 covering five-and-twenty acres. The park, which encircles the lake, 

 has all the varieties of wet and dry, of wood and open, of arable 

 land and pasture, which could entice the different descriptions of 

 animals. From the period of his succession to the estate, Waterton 

 had done everything in his power to attract and protect them, and 

 he fenced the park with a wall eight feet high, which rendered them 

 the same kind of service that the moat had done to the Watertons 

 of ancient times. This fortification cost him ^9000, which, he 

 used jocularly to say, he had saved from the wine he did not drink 

 With its unsurpassed resources, natural and artificial, Walton Hal] 

 was formed to be the retreat of a naturalist. 



