There is not a more princely house among the baronial homes of England. It sits among wooded hills--which to the eye of a Suffolk man would be mountains--where Lincolnshire and Leicestershire join: the towers of Lincoln Cathedral are in sight at the north, and Nottingham Castle in the west: and there is a glitter in some near valley of an affluent of the Trent, shining amid billows of foliage; while within the stately {236} home,[9] the Suffolk doctor could have regaled himself with examples of Rubens and of Murillo, of Teniers, Poussin, and Vandyke. The Duke of Rutland was a kindly man, a sentimental lover of literature, enjoying the verse of Crabbe, and proud of patronizing him, but lacking the supreme art of putting him at ease among his titled visitors; perhaps enjoying from his high poise, the disturbing embarrassments with which the good-natured poet was beset under the bewildering attentions of some butler, who outshone the host in his trappings, and in his lordly condescension to the level of an apothecary's apprentice. It was not altogether pleasant for Crabbe; and when afterward he had married his old flame of Aldborough, and by invitation of the Duke (who was absent in Ireland) was allowed to partake of the hospitalities of the castle, the ironical obsequience of the flunkeys all, drove him away from the baronial roof. Through the influence of friends he secures livings,--first in Dorset, and afterward {237} in Leicestershire (1789), almost within sight of Belvoir towers. Hereabout, or in near counties, where he has parochial duties, he vegetates slumberously, for twenty years or more. He preaches, practises his old apothecary craft, drives (his wife holding the reins), idles, writes books and burns them, grows old, has children, loves flowers, and on one occasion, mounts his horse and gallops sixty miles for a scent of the salt air which he had snuffed as a boy. Meanwhile the old haunts in London, which he knew for so brief a day, know him no more; his old friends are dead, his hair is snowy, his purposes wavering.