There are some traits about the squire’s family also, which appear to me to be national.  It is one of those old aristocratical families, which, I believe, are peculiar to England, and scarcely understood in other countries; that is to say, families of the ancient gentry, who, though destitute of titled rank, maintain a high ancestral pride; who look down upon all nobility of recent creation, and would consider it a sacrifice of dignity to merge the venerable name of their house in a modern title.

This feeling is very much fostered by the importance which they enjoy on their hereditary domains.  The family mansion is an old manor-house, standing in a retired and beautiful part of Yorkshire.  Its inhabitants have been always regarded through the surrounding country as “the great ones of the earth;” and the little village near the hall looks up to the squire with almost feudal homage.  An old manor-house, and an old family of this kind, are rarely to be met with at the present day; and it is probably the peculiar humour of the squire that has retained this secluded specimen of English housekeeping in something like the genuine old style.

I am again quartered in the panelled chamber, in the antique wing of the house.  The prospect from my window, however, has quite a different aspect from that which it wore on my winter visit.  Though early in the month of April, yet a few warm, sunshiny days have drawn forth the beauties of the spring, which, I think, are always most captivating on their first opening.  The parterres of the old-fashioned garden are gay with flowers; and the gardener has brought out his exotics, and placed them along the stone balustrades.  The trees are clothed with green buds and tender leaves; when I throw open my jingling casement I smell the odour of mignonette, and hear the hum of the bees from the flowers against the sunny wall, with the varied song of the throstle, and the cheerful notes of the tuneful little wren.

[Illustration:  The Terrace Garden]

While sojourning in this stronghold of old fashions, it is my intention to make occasional sketches of the scenes and characters before me.  I would have it understood, however, that I am not writing a novel, and have nothing of intricate plot, or marvellous adventure, to promise the reader.  The Hall of which I treat has, for aught I know, neither trap-door, nor sliding-panel, nor donjon-keep:  and indeed appears to have no mystery about it.  The family is a worthy, well-meaning family, that, in all probability, will eat and drink, and go to bed, and get up regularly, from one end of my work to the other; and the squire is so kind-hearted an old gentleman, that I see no likelihood of his throwing any kind of distress in the way of the approaching nuptials.  In a word, I cannot foresee a single extraordinary event that is likely to occur in the whole term of my sojourn at the Hall.

[Illustration:  Stopping to Gather a Flower]