Our house is, however, only the second-best in the place, without reckoning Sir Henry Withers’s fine old castle, which, besides being five miles off, is too grand to be brought into comparison with any neighbouring estate. Brooke Farm is a far larger and handsomer place than ours. The house, a solid old English mansion with many modern additions, which have been made as its owner, Mr. Malton, grew rich, is approached from the village by an avenue of fine chestnuts; but there are sundry other approaches which are much preferred by those who, like myself, frequent the fields and lanes of Brooke Farm. There is a green lane where wild anemones grow in profusion, and at the end of which, close by the back of the mansion, stand some tall elms, the habitation of a society of rooks. When I go to visit Mrs. Malton, I generally choose this road, and pay my respects to the rookery before doing the same to the lady.—Mr. Malton is by far the largest land-owner within a circuit of many miles, and has added to his property, year by year, till it has become as extensive as he can manage himself. Up to this point he believed himself justified in enlarging his farm, but not beyond; for he knows well that the personal superintendence of the proprietor is necessary to the due improvement of an estate of any kind, and especially of a farm. At the west end of the village street stands the church, upon a rising ground planted with evergreens, while the modest parsonage retires behind it, with its little court in front, and its blooming pear-tree trained against the walls. Beyond, are a fine range of fields and some flourishing young plantations; but in my early days they were not to be seen. There was, instead, a wide common, skirted in some parts with very poor cottages. No trees, no gardens were seen around them. I remember how bleak and bare the situation of those dwellings used to appear. A pool of muddy water was before the doors of some, and a dunghill was heaped up against the wall of others. Each had a cowshed, such as it was, with its ragged thatch and its sides full of holes, through which the wind whistled. Each cottager possessed a cow which grazed on the common, and which, though lean from being only half-fed, was the best wealth of its master. As each villager had a right of common, every housekeeper possessed a cow; and often in my evening walk I met eight or nine of these miserable cattle coming home to be milked. Little John Todd, the blacksmith’s son, used to drive in several in company with his father’s. He took charge of Miss Black’s the milliner, of Wickstead’s the publican, and of Harper’s the grocer. With all these cows, there was no great abundance of milk, butter, and cheese, in the place; for no more milk was yielded than was wanted for each family. There were tribes of children in most of the cottages; and the grocer had his shop-boy, the publican his stable-boy, and the milliner her apprentice, to feed;