CHAPTER XVI. AN OLD HALL. You have here a goodly dwelling and a rich. SHAKSPEARE. Lord! who would live turmoiled in a court, SHAKSPEARS. EVELYN Hall was not one of those houses seated in the recesses of a park, where a solitude is to be traversed before you approach its inhabitants. It rose (many people of taste said, too suddenly) in the very village from which itself and its possessors had derived their names ever since the Conquest. Cottages lay scattered in all directions, with every one its little forecourt or garden, filled with sweet herbs, and interspersed with hollyocks, poppies, and all the common cottage flowers. Tremaine himself might have been alive to the air of gay comfort it gave to these humble dwellings: nor was the gaiety diminished by groups of healthy children that played at the doors, under the care (the only one that seemed left them) of several old men, who were consoling their age in the sun. Tremaine tried to be pleased, and sighed to think the time was gone by when such sights and sounds used to give him pleasure. The house was very little changed from what it had been when Tremaine had known it, except that a high dead wall, which had buried the front in gloom, had been thrown down, for a lighter fence, which let in the eve to the whole length of the building. This was only separated from the road by a large broad green court, blazing with flowering shrubs on each side, themselves overtopped by some very lofty timber. At right angles to the line of the dwelling, quite in defiance of all rules of taste, approached the road, skírted on each side by a double row of elms, which formed a favourite walk of the villagers; while a bench or two, placed there on purpose by the good-natured Evelyn, afforded the alternative of repose. And often was it enjoyed, not only by the inhabitants, but by many a wayfaring pilgrim or traveller; and often has a pedlar with his pack, or an old soldier, or soldier's family passing to their homes, been seen resting from their pilgrimage in that pleasant shade. This was reproached to Evelyn by people of taste, as an eyesore, and as letting improper persons intrude upon his privacy. Perhaps it did so; but to this he would reply, by asking how many minutes in the day his sovereignty was invaded? to which he would add, "many or few, God help them, they are welcome." The house itself was of old brick, bordered with stone. It affected no sort of architecture-consisting, in fact, of nothing but three similar divisions, each rising into a pediment crowned by a ball of stone, with a projecting broad window or bartizan in each, making deep recesses in the rooms which they lighted. On the right was a bowling-green, famous in the village annals; on the left a grove of oaks, peopled by rooks, coeval with the family, but which every person of judgment who visited Evelyn condemned as by far too near to the house. The walks were out of all rule; for though there were no figures in yew, nor nine thousand flower-pots in rows, of Reine Marguerites*, yet there was a regular return of the same flowers (as many said, far too common ones,) such as walls, Provence roses, convolvolus, and sweet-william, which sadly offended the eyes, if not the noses, of bota nists of taste. Somehow or another, Evelyn could never bring him * In the garden of M. de Biron at Paris, consisting of fourteen acres, every walk is buttoned on each side by lines of flower-pots, which succeed in their seasons. When I saw it there were nine thousand Asters, or Reine Marguerites.-Lord Orford on Modern Gardening. seif to cure these faults; nay, it has been asserted, we know not how truly, that he was actually once detected conspiring with his gardener to restore the shape of an old peacock, in which a very large yew tree had once been said to flourish; and the story ran that he was only defeated in his purpose by want of skill in the other conspirator. But lest the sombre taste of Queen Elizabeth should convict the family of dulness, a gayer ancestor, in the time of King Charles, had rebuilt the back-front, after a design of the more modern Inigo Jones. In this, some white pilasters of Grecian composition relieved and lighted the pile, whose original red had long been softened into grey. Such was the family-house of Evelyn; who, with the exception of the time he had passed abroad and occasional visits and tours, to which he was not averse, had resided there from the time he came into its possession; a period of full twenty years. It was nearly that time since Tremaine had beheld it, and, in the temper he was in, it did not please. He was full of Vitruvius, Italy, and Belmont; the proximity of the village offended, the church was much too near, and the noise of a blacksmith's hammer, returning at regular intervals, was not so far off but that every stroke clinked upon his ear. Yet how differently may we be affected! I have often sauntered at Evelyn's gate, when there was no other sound that broke in upon the stillness but the rhythm of this very hammer, and I have thought it music. At length Tremaine betook himself to the bell at the gate, which, not being answered immediately, he had leisure still more to criticise the situation of his friend's mansion. This he pronounced within himself to be dull, and wondered that a man of his known taste could have been content to dwell so long in the very midst of clowns. "There was an air of rust about him," said Tremaine to himself, "when he called upon me; and how should it be otherwise?" Then recollecting the appearance of happy cheerfulness which Evelyn had exhibited a few days before, he set it down to the mere effect of a sudden meeting with a man he respected, after so long an absence. A servant in a plain brown livery now presented himself, and apologized with old-fashioned civility for having kept him so long waiting. The other man, he said, was out on a message, and he had been assisting his master in making a new walk. "He must be very much reduced for amusement," thought Tremaine; then, ordering the man to announce him, he entered the house. The inside of it corresponded with the exterior. Old wainscots, old floors, and an old staircase; large fireplaces, little regularity, and much convenience. The hall was like all old halls,-perhaps too large for the rest of the house; yet it threw an air of spaciousness, if not of grandeur, about it, which it would not have been so well without. Its only ornament was the back and breastplate, in which a Sir John Evelyn had sallied forth to join Prince Rupert, previous to the battle of Marston Moor! The furniture, however, of the other apartments, which was comparatively modern, shewed that comfort, though without splendour, had been thoroughly studied. Some very good paintings by the old masters, added to family pictures, coloured glass, and other ornamental, though old-fashioned appendages, gave a glow and cheerfulness to every part of the mansion which dissipated all notion of gloom. A door from the hall into a garden-room shewed books, towards which Tremaine mechanically directed his steps. A grand piano-forte, a harp, and a violoncello, with many music-books; some fine drawings in gilt frames (one of them a perfect delineation of Woodington), and a pretty large collection of belles-lettres, religion, and moral philosophy, to say nothing of Richardson's and all the best modern novels, demonstrated that this was at least not the most neglected room in the house. A silk work-bag and lace veil shewed also that the inhabitants were not confined to the rougher sex. VOL I. F CHAPTER XVII. A PARSON, AND A PARSON'S DAUGHTER. Pardon me, I pray you; I thought that all things had been savage here. The fairest hand I ever touch'd; oh beauty! SHAKSPEARE. ALL further examination was precluded by the approach of Dr. Evelyn himself, and a lady whom he presented to Tremaine as his daughter Georgina. Jaundiced as he was, the lovely, the dazzling freshness of this young person, and the beams of a countenance in which modesty and ingenuousness seemed to rival one another, could not fail to strike Tremaine with more than common pleasure. There was a natural grace in her manner, so evidently superior to that which is, or can be taught, that, prepared to criticise, nay, even to find fault, he was in spite of himself enchanted. When introduced, she gave him her hand by her father's command, and, though perfectly self-possessed, for a moment it called into her cheek a blush which the most skilful painter would in vain have attempted to delineate. The hand, too, which she gave, as he did not fail to observe, was of exquisite mould, and he was a great admirer of a beautiful hand. Small, taper, white, and of velvet softness, it combined with an airy foot, and a general fineness of limb, to produce that lovely symmetry always so powerful in its effects, and so infinitely more fascinating to a mind of taste than the most perfect beauty without it. In truth there was something in this young creature's |