It is worth while here to take a glance at Sir Roger and his estate.  They wore a strange contrast.  The one bore all the signs of progress, the other of a stereotyped feudality.  The estate, which in the days of the first Sir Roger de Rockville had been half morass and half wilderness, was now cultivated to the pitch of British agricultural science.  The marshlands beyond the river were one splendid expanse of richest meadows, yielding a rental of four solid pounds per acre.  Over hill and dale on this side for miles, where formerly ran wild deer, and grew wild woodlands of furze-bushes, now lay excellent farms and hamlets, and along the ridge of the ancient cliffs rose the most magnificent woods.  Woods, too, clothed the steep hillsides, and swept down to the noble river, their very boughs hanging far out over its clear and rapid waters.  In the midst of these fine woods stood Rockville Hall, the family seat of the Rockvilles.  It reared its old brick walls above the towering mass of elms, and travelers at a distance recognized it for what it was, the mansion of an ancient and wealthy family.

The progress of England in arts, science, commerce, and manufacture, had carried Sir Roger’s estate along with it.  It was full of active and moneyed farmers, and flourished under modern influences.  How lucky it would have been for the Rockville family had it done the same!

But amid this estate there was Sir Roger solitary, and the last of the line.  He had grown well enough—­there was nothing stunted about him, so far as you could see on the surface.  In stature, he exceeded six feet.  His colossal elms could not boast of a properer relative growth.  He was as large a landlord, and as tall a justice of the peace, as you could desire:  but, unfortunately, he was, after all, only the shell of a man.  Like many of his veteran elms, there was a very fine stem, only it was hollow.  There was a man, just with the rather awkward deficiency of a soul.

And it were no difficult task to explain, either, how this had come about.  The Rockvilles saw plainly enough the necessity of manuring their lands, but they scorned the very idea of manuring their family.  What! that most ancient, honorable, and substantial family, suffer any of the common earth of humanity to gather about its roots!  The Rockvilles were so careful of their good blood, that they never allied it to any but blood as pure and inane as their own.  Their elms flourished in the rotten earth of plebeian accumulations, and their acres produced large crops of corn from the sewage of towns and fat sinks, but the Rockvilles themselves took especial care that no vulgar vigor from the real heap of ordinary human nature should infuse a new force of intellect into their race.  The Rockvilles needed nothing; they had all that an ancient, honorable, and substantial family could need.  The Rockvilles had no need to study at school—­why should they?  They did not want to get on.  The Rockvilles did not aspire to distinction for talent in the world—­why should they?  They had a large estate.  So the Rockville soul, unused from generation to generation, grew—­