_For the attics were Anglo-Saxon_. _The third door Norman_. _The second Cinque-cento_. _The first-floor Elizabethan_. _The right wing Pure Doric_. _The centre Early English_, _with a huge portico copied from the Parthenon_. _The left wing pure Bœotian_, _which the country folk admired most of all_, _became it was just like the new barracks in the town_, _only three times as big_. _The grand staircase was copied from the Catacombs at Rome_. _The back staircase from the Tajmahal at Agra_. _This was built by Sir John’s great-great-great-uncle_, _who won_, _in Lord Clive’s Indian Wars_, _plenty of money_, _plenty of wounds_, _and no more taste than his betters_. _The cellars were copied from the caves of Elephanta_. _The offices from the Pavilion at Brighton_. And the rest from nothing in heaven, or earth, or under the earth. So that Harthover House was a great puzzle to antiquarians, and a thorough Naboth’s vineyard to critics, and architects, and all persons who like meddling with other men’s business, and spending other men’s money. So they were all setting upon poor Sir John, year after year, and trying to talk him into spending a hundred thousand pounds or so, in building, to please them and not himself. But he always put them off, like a canny North-countryman as he was. One wanted him to build a Gothic house, but he said he was no Goth; and another to build an Elizabethan, but he said he lived under good Queen Victoria, and not good Queen Bess; and another was bold enough to tell him that his house was ugly, but he said he lived inside it, and not outside; and another, that there was no unity in it, but he said that that was just why he liked the old place. For he liked to see how each Sir John, and Sir Hugh, and Sir Ralph, and Sir Randal, had left his mark upon the place, each after his own taste; and he had no more notion of disturbing his ancestors’ work than of disturbing their graves. For now the house looked like a real live house, that had a history, and had grown and grown as the world grew; and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know who his own grandfather was, who would change it for some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan thing, which looked as if it bad been all spawned in a night, as mushrooms are. From which you may collect (if you have wit enough) that Sir John was a very sound-headed, sound-hearted squire, and just the man to keep the country side in order, and show good sport with his hounds.