The mansion at Ravenswood, which had braved the storms of eighty-five winters (a venerable age for an American house), was pitched on a hill commanding a view of the Hudson for forty miles. Without, it was built of rough stone, with an ample wooden _stoop_ running all round it, and a great variety of vines and creepers running round all the pillars of the stoop;--within, it branched off into large halls and spacious rooms, filled with antediluvian furniture, and guiltless of the ambitious upholstery attempts of Young New-York, which in such matters goes ahead of Paris itself. The library alone, in which Carl lived,--that is to say, he did everything but dining and sleeping there,--was fitted up in modern style, furnished with luxurious arm-chairs and sofas, the walls and ceiling neatly painted in oak, and the principal window composed of one oval pane of glass set in a frame, to which the external landscape supplied an exquisite picture. The hill swept down to the water's edge almost, where it terminated abruptly in a lofty terrace, ninety feet above the level of the shore. The woodlands all about--on Benson's place, on the places adjoining, on the opposite bank--would have been beautiful at any time of the year; now, when the foliage was changing color, in anticipation of the coming frost, they were surpassingly so. As the trees change not all at once, but different ones assume different tints successively, the natural kaleidoscope is varied from day to day. The sumach leaf is one of the first to alter; it becomes a vivid scarlet; then the maple assumes a brilliant red and gold; then others put on a rich sienna, and others a warm olive. Here and there were interspersed patches of evergreens, pines looking almost blue, and cedars looking quite black from the contrast of the gorgeous and fiery coloring that surrounded them. The river water was deep blue; in the little bay north of Ravenswood it shaded off into a soft olive from the reflection of the foliage and grass about it; while beyond the further bank of the Hudson rose the Kaatskill[21] chain, richly wooded to their summits, and painted with the myriad dyes of autumn,--a fitting background to the landscape. Of course the finest part of this view was beyond the limits of Ravenswood, but so much of it as belonged to Carl (and his grounds covered some two hundred acres) was cleverly disposed with the help of an ingenious landscape-gardener; the trees were cut into picturesque clumps and vistas, opened at the desirable points. Henry, who bragged for all the family as well as for himself, took care to inform Ashburner how, when the place came into Carl's possession (or rather into his wife's, for by the laws of New-York, the wife's property is absolutely hers, and out of her husband's control) by the demise of his father-in-law, there was hardly a carriage-road on it, and how he had devoted all his spare income to it for seven years, "and made it what you see it."