The influence of the great house has very wide ramifications, and extends far beyond the radius of park, village and estate.  It greatly affects the prosperity of the country and county towns.  Go into Exeter or Shrewsbury on a market-day in the autumn months, and you will find the streets crowded with carriages.  If a local herald be with you, he will tell you all about their owners by glancing at the liveries and panels.  They belong, half of them, to the old county gentry, who have shopped here—­always at the same shops, according as their proprietors are Whigs or Tories—­for generations.  It may well be imagined what a difference the custom of twenty gentlemen spending on an average twenty-five thousand dollars a year makes to a grocer or draper.  Besides, this class of customer demands a first-rate article, and consequently it is worth while to keep it in stock.  The fishmonger knows that twenty great houses within ten miles require their handsome dish of fish for dinner as regularly as their bread and butter.  It becomes worth his while therefore to secure a steady supply.  In this way smaller people profit, and country life becomes pleasant to them too, inasmuch as the demands of the rich contribute to the comfort of those in moderate circumstances.

Let us pass to the daily routine of an affluent country home.  The breakfast hour is from nine to eleven, except where hunting-men or enthusiasts in shooting are concerned.  The former are often in the saddle before six, and young partridge-slayers may, during the first fortnight of September—­after that their ardor abates a bit—­be found in the stubbles at any hour after sunrise.

A country-house breakfast in the house of a gentlemen with from three thousand a year upward, when several guests are in the house, is a very attractive meal.  Of course its degree of excellence varies, but we will take an average case in the house of a squire living on his paternal acres with five thousand pounds a year and knowing how to live.

It is 10 A.M. in October:  family prayers, usual in nine country-houses out of ten, which a guest can attend or not as he pleases, are over.  The company is gradually gathering in the breakfast-room.  It is an ample apartment, paneled with oak and hung with family pictures.  If you have any appreciation for fine plate—­and you are to be pitied if you have not—­you will mark the charming shape and exquisite chasing of the antique urn and other silver vessels, which shine as brilliantly as on the day they left the silversmiths to Her Majesty, Queen Anne.  No “Brummagem” patterns will you find here.

On the table at equidistant points stand two tiny tables or dumb-waiters, which are made to revolve.  On these are placed sugar, cream, butter, preserves, salt, pepper, mustard, etc., so that every one can help himself without troubling others—­a great desideratum, for many people are of the same mind on this point as a well-known English family, of whom it was once observed that they were very nice people, but didn’t like being bored to pass the mustard.