This was
the only chance I should ever have of knowing him. I sprang out of
bed, scrambled to the window, snatched aside the curtains, and just
caught a glimpse of the rear of a person getting in at the coach-door.
The skirts of a brown coat parted behind, and gave me a full view of
the broad disk of a pair of drab breeches. The door closed--"all
right!" was the word--the coach whirled off:--and that was all I ever
saw of the stout gentleman!
FOREST TREES.
"A living gallery of aged trees."
One of the favourite themes of boasting with the Squire, is the noble
trees on his estate, which, in truth, has some of the finest that I
have seen in England. There is something august and solemn in the
great avenues of stately oaks that gather their branches together high
in air, and seem to reduce the pedestrians beneath them to mere
pigmies. "An avenue of oaks or elms," the Squire observes, "is the
true colonnade that should lead to a gentleman's house. As to stone
and marble, any one can rear them at once--they are the work of the
day; but commend me to the colonnades that have grown old and great
with the family, and tell by their grandeur how long the family has
endured."
The Squire has great reverence for certain venerable trees, gray with
moss, which he considers as the ancient nobility of his domain.
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