University of Virginia Library

THE HALL.

“Merry Beggars.”

The reader, if he has perused the volumes of
the Sketch Book, will probably recollect something
of the Bracebridge family, with which
I once passed a Christmas. I am now on
another visit to the Hall, having been invited
to a wedding, which is shortly to take place.
The Squire's second son, Guy, a fine spirited
young captain in the army, is about to be married
to his father's ward, the fair Julia Templeton.
A gathering of relatives and friends has
already commenced to celebrate the joyful occasion;
for the old gentleman is an enemy to
quiet, private weddings. “There is nothing,”
he says, “like launching a young couple gaily,

and cheering them from the shore: a good outset
is half the voyage.”

Before proceeding any farther, I would beg
that the Squire might not be confounded with
that class of hard riding, fox hunting gentlemen,
so often described, and, in fact, so nearly
extinct in England. I use this rural title partly
because it is his universal appellation throughout
the neighbourhood, and partly because it
saves me the frequent repetition of his name;
which is one of those rough old English names,
at which Frenchmen exclaim in despair.

The Squire is, in fact, a lingering specimen
of the old English country gentleman, rusticated
a little by living almost entirely on his
estate; and something of a humourist, as Englishmen
are apt to become, when they have an
opportunity of living in their own way. I like
his hobby passing well, however, which is a
bigotted devotion to old English manners and
customs; it jumps a little with my own humour,
having as yet a lively and unsated curiosity
about the ancient and genuine characteristics
of my “father land.”

There are some traits about this 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 in their hereditary
domains. The family mansion is an old manor
house, standing in a retired and beautiful part of
Yorkshire. Its inhabitants have been 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. I am again quartered in the
pannelled chamber, in the antique wing of the
house. The prospect from my window, however,
has quite a different aspect from that it

wore on my winter visit. Though early in the
month of April, yet a few warm sunshiny days
have drawn forth the early beauties of the spring.
The parterres of the old fashioned garden are
already gay with flowers, and the gardener has
brought out his exotics and placed them along
the stone ballustrades. The trees are clothed
with green buds and tender leaves; when I open
my window 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 notes of the tuneful little
wren.

While sojourning in this strong hold of old
fashions, I shall be tempted to make some occasional
sketches of the scenes and characters before
me; mingled with anecdotes and remarks
of what I have seen and thought and felt, in the
course of my ramblings. In a word, I shall
make use of the leisure which is now afforded
me, to clear off the motley contents which are
apt to accumulate in a traveller's portfolio.