Mine too, BLAKESMOOR, was thy noble Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars—­stately busts in marble—­ranged round:  of whose countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder; but the mild Galba had my love.  There they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immortality.

Mine too, thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden—­so common since, that bats have roosted in it.

Mine too—­whose else?—­thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun-baked southern wall; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespeak their pristine state to have been gilt and glittering; the verdant quarters backwarder still; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long murmuring woodpigeon, with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental mystery.

Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently in your idol worship, walks and windings of BLAKESMOOR! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your pleasant places?  I sometimes think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations there may be a hope—­a germ to be revivified.

POOR RELATIONS

A poor relation—­is the most irrelevant thing in nature,—­a piece of impertinent correspondency,—­an odious approximation,—­a haunting conscience,—­a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,—­an unwelcome remembrancer,—­a perpetually recurring mortification,—­a drain on your purse,—­a more intolerable dun upon your pride,—­a drawback upon success,—­a rebuke to your rising,—­a stain in your blood,—­a blot on your scutcheon,—­a rent in your garment,—­a death’s head at your banquet,—­Agathocles’ pot,—­a Mordecai in your gate,—­a Lazarus at your door,—­a lion in your path,—­a frog in your chamber,—­a fly in your ointment,—­a mote in your eye,—­a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends,—­the one thing not needful,—­the hail in harvest,—­the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.

He is known by his knock.  Your heart telleth you “That is Mr. ——.”  A rap, between familiarity and respect; that demands, and, at the same time, seems to despair of, entertainment.  He entereth smiling, and—­embarrassed.  He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and—­draweth it back again.  He casually looketh in about dinner time—­when the table is full.  He offereth to go away, seeing you have company—­but is induced to stay.  He filleth a chair, and your