“The last phaeton dashed away, and my chaise advanced to the door. A handsome boy, in a kind of page’s dress, immediately came to the window, addressed me by name, and informed me that his Grace was out deer-shooting, but that my room was prepared, and he was ordered to wait on me. I followed him through a hall lined with statues, deers’ horns, and armour, and was ushered into a large chamber looking out on a park, extending with its lawns and woods to the edge of the horizon. A more lovely view never feasted human eye. “‘Who is at the castle?’ I asked, as the boy busied himself in unstrapping my portmanteau. ‘O, a great many, sir’--he stopped in his occupation, and began counting on his fingers a long list of lords and ladies. ‘And how many sit down to dinner?’ ‘Above ninety, sir, besides the Duke and Duchess.’ ‘That will do;’ and off tripped my slender gentleman, with his laced jacket, giving the fire a terrible stir-up in his way out, and turning back to inform me that the dinner hour was seven precisely. “It was a mild, bright afternoon, quite warm for the end of an English September, and with a fire in the room, and a soft sunshine pouring in at the windows, a seat at the open casement was far from disagreeable. I passed the time till the sun set, looking out on the park. Hill and valley lay between my eye and the horizon; sheep fed in picturesque flocks; and small fallow-deer grazed near them; the trees were planted, and the distant forest shaped by the hand of taste; and broad and beautiful as was the expanse taken in by the eye, it was evidently one princely possession. A mile from the castle-wall, the shaven sward extended in a carpet of velvet softness, as bright as emerald, studded by clumps of shrubbery, like flowers wrought elegantly in tapestry; and across it bounded occasionally a hare, and the pheasants fed undisturbed near the thickets, or a lady with flowing riding-dress and flaunting feather, dashed into sight upon her fleet blood-palfrey, and was lost the next moment in the woods, or a boy put his pony to its mettle up the ascent, or a gamekeeper idled into sight with his gun in the hollow of his arm, and his hounds at his heels. And all this little world of enjoyment and luxury and beauty lay in the hand of one man, and was created by his wealth in those northern wilds of Scotland, a day’s journey almost from the possession of another human being! I never realized so forcibly the splendid results of wealth and primogeniture.