After all, thought I, time is not such an invariable destroyer as he is represented.  If he pulls down, he likewise builds up; if he impoverishes one, he enriches another; his very dilapidations furnish matter for new works of controversy, and his rust is more precious than the most costly gilding.  Under his plastic hand trifles rise into importance; the nonsense of one age becomes the wisdom of another; the levity of the wit gravitates into the learning of the pedant, and an ancient farthing moulders into infinitely more value than a modern guinea.

[Illustration:  The Farm-House]

THE FARM-HOUSE

                  —­Love and hay
    Are thick sown, but come up full of thistles.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

I was so much pleased with the anecdotes which were told me of Ready-Money Jack Tibbets, that I got Master Simon, a day or two since, to take me to his house.  It was an old-fashioned farm-house, built of brick, with curiously twisted chimneys.  It stood at a little distance from the road, with a southern exposure, looking upon a soft green slope of meadow.  There was a small garden in front, with a row of beehives humming among beds of sweet herbs and flowers.  Well-scoured milking tubs, with bright copper hoops, hung on the garden paling.  Fruit trees were trained up against the cottage, and pots of flowers stood in the windows.  A fat superannuated mastiff lay in the sunshine at the door; with a sleek cat sleeping peacefully across him.

Mr. Tibbets was from home at the time of our calling, but we were received with hearty and homely welcome by his wife—­a notable, motherly woman, and a complete pattern for wives, since, according to Master Simon’s account, she never contradicts honest Jack, and yet manages to have her own way, and to control him in everything.  She received us in the main room of the house, a kind of parlour or hall, with great brown beams of timber across it, which Mr. Tibbets is apt to point out with some exultation, observing that they don’t put such timber in houses now-a-days.  The furniture was old-fashioned, strong, and highly polished; the walls were hung with coloured prints of the story of the Prodigal Son, who was represented in a red coat and leather breeches.  Over the fireplace was a blunderbuss, and a hard-favoured likeness of Ready-Money Jack, taken, when he was a young man, by the same artist that painted the tavern sign; his mother having taken a notion that the Tibbetses had as much right to have a gallery of family portraits as the folks at the Hall.

The good dame pressed us very much to take some refreshment, and tempted us with a variety of household dainties, so that we were glad to compound by tasting some of her home-made wines.  While we were there, the son and heir-apparent came home; a good-looking young fellow, and something of a rustic beau.  He took us over the premises, and showed us the whole establishment.  An air of homely but substantial plenty prevailed throughout; everything was of the best materials, and in the best condition.  Nothing was out of place, or ill made; and you saw everywhere the signs of a man that took care to have the worth of his money, and that paid as he went.