All around the immediate domain of the dwelling-house were orchards, woodlands and cultivated fields, with the usual barns and other structures necessary in the process of agriculture;--the whole region presenting a level plain, some fifty or sixty feet above the tide, of singular richness as a landscape, and no less agreeable to be looked upon for its associations with the idea of comfortable independence in the proprietor. This homestead had obtained the local designation of the Rose Croft,--a name, in some degree, descriptive of the predominant embellishment of the spot. In his attire, Master Anthony Warden, the worshipful Collector (to give him his usual style of address in the province) exhibited some tendency towards the coxcombry of his day. It was marked by that scrupulous observance of the prerogative of rank and age which characterised the costume of the olden time,--smacking no little of the flavour of the official martinet. Authority, amongst our ancestors, was wont to borrow consequence from show. The broad line which separated gentle from simple was recognised, in those days, not less strongly in the habiliments of the person than in his nurture and manners. The divisions between the classes of society were not more authentically distinguished in any outward sign than in the embroidered velvet or cloth of the man of wealth, and the plain serge, worsted, or leather of the craftsman. The Collector of St. Mary's, on festive occasions, went forth arrayed much after the manner in which Leslie has represented Sir Roger de Coverly, in his admirable painting of that knight; and although he was too vain of his natural locks to adopt the periwig of that period, yet he had trained his luxuriant tresses into a studied imitation of this artificial adornment. His embroidered coat of drab velvet, with wadded skirts and huge open cuffs, his lace wristbands, his ample vest, and white lamb's-wool hose rolled above his knees, his buckled shoe and three-cornered hat--all adjusted with a particularity that would put our modern foppery to shame--gave to the worthy burgess of St. Mary's a substantial ascendancy and an unquestioned regard, that rendered him, next to the Proprietary, the most worshipful personage in the province. This pedantry of costume and the circumspect carriage which it exacted, were pleasantly contrasted with the flowing vivacity of the wearer, engendering by their concourse an amusing compound, which I might call a fettered and pinioned alacrity of demeanour, the rigid stateliness of exterior seeming rather ineffectually to encase, as a half-bursting chrysalis, the wings of a gay nature.