Immediately in front of the porch, and only divided from it by the carriage-sweep, was an enormous flower-bed, sloping towards the sides, and culminating in the centre,--the pride of the head-gardener's soul. Right and left of the house were two arches, exactly alike. Passing through that to the left, you came upon the stables and coach-houses, of which there is little to be said, save that they were old-fashioned, and what the helpers called "ill-conwenient;" and that the fine London grooms who came down with their master's hacks and carriage-horses in the autumn--Sir Marmaduke was never at Bissett during the hunting season--used to curse them freely as a set of tumbledown old sheds, fit only for jobs and fly-'osses. And yet the old quadrangle, environed by the stable-buildings, with their red-tiled roofs and their slate-coloured half-hatch doors, each duly bearing its horse-shoe and its hecatomb of mouse and stoat skeletons, was picturesque, more especially of an evening, when the setting sun gleamed on the quaint old clock-turret, ivy-covered and swallow-haunted, and steeped in a rich crimson glow the pretty cottage of old Martin, erst head-groom, now a superannuated pensioner Martin, who was never so happy as when babbling of bygone days, and who "minded the time" when the stables were full of blood horses, and when Master Marmaduke (the present proprietor) rode Saucy Sally over all the raspers in the county. Through the other arch you came upon the gardens of the Grange. Immediately before you lay a broad expanse of lawn,--such smooth, soft turf as is only met with in England, and only there in well-to-do places. Short, crisp, and velvety was the grass, kept with the greatest care, and rolled and mown with the most undeviating punctuality; for Sir Marmaduke was proud of his lawn, and liked to sit out there in his high-backed rustic seat on the hot August evenings, placidly smoking his cigar, and occasionally raising his head to be fanned by the soft sea-breeze which came blowing over the neighbouring downs. He would as soon have thought of allowing a servant to take a liberty with him as of permitting any one to drive a croquet-iron into that lawn, or to attempt to play any game on it. Between the house and the lawn ran a broad gravelled walk, passing down which you came upon the orchard and upon the fig-garden, which was the glory of the county, and was enclosed with an old red-brick wall, which itself looked ripe and ruddy. To the right lay the kitchen-garden,--a fertile slope of land in the highest state of cultivation, dotted every here and there with huge lights and frames, and spread nets, and overgrown cucumbers, and bursting marrows; for though Sir Marmaduke cared but little for flowers, he was a great fruit-grower, and, next to seeing his pines and melons on his own table (where, glowing on the old ancestral Wentworth plate, they looked like a study for Lance), his