The _stars_, in my map, mark the spots where manor-houses, or gentlemen's mansions, formerly stood, and stood, too, only about sixty years ago. Every parish had its manor house in the first place; and then there were, down this Valley, twenty-one others; so that, in this distance of about thirty miles, there stood fifty mansion houses. Where are they _now_? I believe there are but eight that are at all worthy of the name of mansion houses; and even these are but poorly kept up, and, except in two or three instances, are of no benefit to the labouring people; they employ but few persons; and, in short, do not half supply the place of any eight of the old mansions. All these mansions, all these parsonages, aye, and their goods and furniture, together with the clocks, the brass kettles, the brewing-vessels, the good bedding and good clothes and good furniture, and the stock in pigs, or in money, of the inferior classes, in this series of once populous and gay villages and hamlets; all these have been by the accursed system of taxing and funding and paper-money, by the well-known exactions of the state, and by the not less real, though less generally understood, extortions of the _monopolies_ arising out of paper-money; all these have been, by these accursed means, conveyed away, out of this Valley, to the haunts of the tax-eaters and the monopolizers. There are many of the _mansion houses_, the ruins of which you yet behold. At Milton there are two mansion houses, the walls and the roofs of which yet remain, but which are falling gradually to pieces, and the garden walls are crumbling down. At Enford, Bennet, the Member for the county, had a large mansion house, the stables of which are yet standing. In several places, I saw, still remaining, indubitable traces of an ancient manor house, namely a dove-cote or pigeon-house. The poor pigeons have kept possession of their heritage, from generation to generation, and so have the rooks, in their several rookeries, while the paper-system has swept away, or rather swallowed-up, the owners of the dove-cotes and of the lofty trees, about forty families of which owners have been ousted in this one Valley, and have become dead-weight creatures, tax-gatherers, barrack-fellows, thief-takers, or, perhaps, paupers or thieves.