Fifty years ago the picturesque, sunny town of Holmnook had for its physician one Dr. Kemp, a grave and reverend Æsculapius, punctilious in etiquette, with an imposing formality of manner, accurate in costume, in every respect a courtier of the old school. Holmnook is an antique market-town, square and compact, a capital in miniature, lying at the foot of an old feudal castle, in which the Bigods once held sway. That stronghold of moated towers was three centuries since the abode of a mighty Duke; Surrey, the poet earl, luckless and inspired, was born within its walls. The noble acres of the princely house fell into the hands of a _parvenu_--a rich, grasping lawyer;--that was bad. The lawyer died and went to his place, leaving the land to the poor;--that was better. And now the produce of the rich soil, which whilom sent forth a crop of mailed knights, supports a college of toil and time-worn peasants, saving their cold thin blood from the penury of the poor-house, and sheltering them from the contumelies of--Guardians of the Poor. Hard by the college, housing these ancient humble children of man, is a school, based on the same beneficent foundation, where the village lads are taught by as ripe a scholar and true a gentleman as ever came from the banks of Isis; and round which temple of learning they play their rough, noisy games, under the observation of the veterans of the bourg--the almsmen and almswomen who sit in the sun and on benches before their college, clad in the blue coats of the charity, and feeling no shame in them, though the armorial badge of that old lawyer is tacked upon them in red cloth. Holmnook is unlike most other English towns of its size, abounding as it does in large antique mansions, formerly inhabited by the great officers and dependents on the ducal household, who in many cases were blood relations of the duke himself. Under the capacious windows of these old houses, in the streets, and round the market-square, run rows of limes, spreading their cool shade over the pinnacles of gabled roofs, and flinging back bars across the shining shingle which decorates the plaster walls of the older houses. In the centre of the town stands an enormous church, large enough to hold an entire army of Christians, and containing many imposing tombs of earls and leaders, long since gone to their account.