The Weathercock family, or rather that branch of it with which we are at present concerned, resides on a large and productive estate in Leicestershire. We have spent much time with them, and have had several opportunities of studying their peculiar merits. Their mansion affords a perfect college for mutability; everything is kept in readiness to be destroyed or refitted, removed or replaced, at a minute’s warning. It is quite delightful to see how new fashions of furniture come in and go out; how the faces of the servants are continually altered; how the hour of meals, the regulation of the parterres--in short, the whole system of domestic economy is always subjected to some new ephemeral arrangement, which must soon give way to another equally new and equally ephemeral. To us, we say, this is delightful. But one seldom finds two tastes alike. Many pronounce the Weathercocks to be quite crazed; and many decide that “they are mighty good kind of people, but have very odd whimsies!” The disposition for change, which is inherent in the family, has produced very strange effects upon their place of residence. The house was originally a good stout old-fashioned house, remarkable for nothing but the antiquity of its pictures and the size of its dining-hall. But its name and character have shifted considerably since it came into the possession of my worthy friends. It has been alternately a Hall, an Abbey, a Castle, and a Lodge; nay, during the life of the late Sir Adonis Weathercock, it became, for a few months, a Cottage. The proprietor, however, in this instance, gave up his design before it had affected anything beyond the windows. The mansion bears more permanent marks of its other metamorphoses. On one side it has the square turrets and battlements of the feudal system; on another, the flowery-pointed arch of a Gothic cathedral. One of the owners of the place thought proper to sink a moat round his habitation; but he afterwards filled it up, and converted it into a circular gravel walk. Another had a fancy for erecting some solid Doric pillars; he, doubtless, much improved their appearance, by placing upon them a beautiful Chinese veranda. Similar observations are suggested by an inspection of the interior of the building. You may almost read a history of two or three centuries in the reliques of their manners which are scattered in every apartment. War has been carried on with tolerably equal success between Lely’s portraits, Gainsborough’s landscapes, and Bunbury’s caricatures. A cast of a Hercules looks somewhat angrily upon a mandarin, who is his next neighbour; and a timorous Venus maintains her post with great obstinacy, although her divine presence is invaded by the scaly folds of an enormous dragon. There are bronzes and Cupids, oaken tables and mahogany tables, drab papering and crimson papering, high mantelpieces and low mantelpieces, Dresden china and French china; everything is superb, everything incongruous, everything unfinished.