observances, and is deeply read in the writers, ancient and modern, who have treated on the subject.  Indeed, his favourite range of reading is among the authors who flourished at least two centuries since; who, he insists, wrote and thought more like true Englishmen than any of their successors.  He even regrets sometimes that he had not been born a few centuries earlier, when England was itself, and had its peculiar manners and customs.  As he lives at some distance from the main road, in rather a lonely part of the country, without any rival gentry near him, he has that most enviable of all blessings to an Englishman, an opportunity of indulging the bent of his own humour without molestation.  Being representative of the oldest family in the neighbourhood, and a great part of the peasantry being his tenants, he is much looked up to, and, in general, is known simply by the appellation of ‘The Squire;’ a title which has been accorded to the head of the family since time immemorial.  I think it best to give you these hints about my worthy old father, to prepare you for any little eccentricities that might otherwise appear absurd.”

     * Peacham’s “Complete Gentleman,” 1622.

We had passed for some time along the wall of a park, and at length the chaise stopped at the gate.  It was in a heavy, magnificent old style, of iron bars, fancifully wrought at top into flourishes and flowers.  The huge square columns that supported the gate were surmounted by the family crest.  Close adjoining was the porter’s lodge, sheltered under dark fir-trees, and almost buried in shrubbery.

The post-boy rang a large porter’s bell, which resounded through the still, frosty air, and was answered by the distant barking of dogs, with which the mansion-house seemed garrisoned.  An old woman immediately appeared at the gate.  As the moonlight fell strongly upon her, I had full view of a little primitive dame, dressed very much in the antique taste, with a neat kerchief and stomacher, and her silver hair peeping from under a cap of snowy whiteness.  She came curtseying forth, with many expressions of simple joy at seeing her young master.  Her husband, it seems, was up at the house keeping Christmas eve in the servants’ hall; they could not do without him, as he was the best hand at a song and story in the household.

My friend proposed that we should alight and walk through the park to the hall, which was at no great distance, while the chaise should follow on.  Our road wound through a noble avenue of trees, among the naked branches of which the moon glittered as she rolled through the deep vault of a cloudless sky.  The lawn beyond was sheeted with a slight covering of snow, which here and there sparkled as the moonbeams caught a frosty crystal; and at a distance might be seen a thin, transparent vapour, stealing up from the low grounds, and threatening gradually to shroud the landscape.