Aye, master, fine old trees. Lord bless us! I have heard my father say His grandfather could just remember back When they were planted there. It was my task To keep them trimmed, and ’twas a pleasure to me; My poor old lady many a time would come And tell me where to clip, for she had played In childhood under them, and ’twas her pride To keep them in their beauty. * * * * * I could as soon Have ploughed my father’s grave as cut them down. Then those old dark windows— They’re demolished too; The very redbreasts that so regular Came to my lady for her morning crumbs Won’t know those windows now. There was a sweet briar, too, that grew beside; My lady loved at evening to sit there And knit, and her old dog lay at her feet, And slept in the sun; ’twas an old favourite dog. She did not love him less that he was old And feeble, and he always had a place By the fireside; and when he died at last, She made me dig a grave in the garden for him, For she was good to all: a woeful day ’Twas for the poor when to the grave she went. —At Christmas, sir! It would have warmed your heart if you had seen Her Christmas kitchen—how the blazing fire Made her fine pewter shine, and holly boughs So cheerful red; and as for mistletoe, The finest bush that grew in the country round Was marked for madam. Then her old ale went So bountiful about! A Christmas cask, And ’twas a noble one. God help me, sir, But I shall never see such days.” Still greater changes than those described in the lines quoted above are witnessed at the old Court House and in its immediate vicinity,—changes so great that were it possible for one of its former feudal owners to revisit the scene he would fail to recognise the place. Ugly pit-mounds are seen surrounding the building; the place is illumined by the blaze of the blast-furnace, the screech of machinery is heard around it, and the snort of the iron horse sounds across the park, where the hounds were wont to “Rend the air, and with a lusty cry Awake the echo, and confound Their perfect language in a mingled voice.”