He breathes the
pure air as freely, and lolls as luxuriously under the shade, as the
lord of the soil; and if he has not the privilege of calling all
that he sees his own, he has not, at the same time, the trouble of
paying for it, and keeping it in order.
I now found myself among noble avenues of oaks and elms, whose
vast size bespoke the growth of centuries. The wind sounded solemnly
among their branches, and the rooks cawed from their hereditary
nests in the tree tops. The eye ranged through a long lessening vista,
with nothing to interrupt the view but a distant statue; and a vagrant
deer stalking like a shadow across the opening.
There is something about these stately old avenues that has the
effect of Gothic architecture, not merely from the pretended
similarity of form, but from their bearing the evidence of long
duration, and of having had their origin in a period of time with
which we associate ideas of romantic grandeur. They betoken also the
long-settled dignity, and proudly-concentrated independence of an
ancient family; and I have heard a worthy but aristocratic old
friend observe, when speaking of the sumptuous palaces of modern
gentry, that "money could do much with stone and mortar, but, thank
Heaven, there was no such thing as suddenly building up an avenue of
oaks.
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