This had been done by Mr. Lee's orders. He had drawn the plans, and his architect had carried them out splendidly. Our first view of the house was accompanied with exclamations of pleasure which delighted Mr. Lee, who had kept all his improvements a secret, that he might enjoy our surprise. Indeed, the site of the house was so finely uplifted from the valley, that the effect was that of many lordly mansions we had seen on the Continent, though I do not remember one more picturesque in itself, or that could command a landscape to compare with this in extent or varied beauty. It was a lovely June day when we reached the Ridge; everything had been prepared for our reception. In the years of our absence nothing had been permitted to go to decay, but many improvements presented themselves as we turned up the carriage-road. A young peach-orchard had grown into bearing trees; grape trellices were tangled thickly with vines; choice fruit-trees of every kind had just lost their blossoms. A range of hot-houses glittered through the trees. All this made the Ridge more beautiful by far than it had been years before when it seemed a paradise to me. On entering the house, we were still more pleasantly surprised. Everything rich and rare that a long residence abroad had enabled Mr. Lee to collect, was arranged through the rooms,--bronzes, statuettes of marble, old china carvings, pictures, ornaments of malachite, and Lapes lazula, met us on every hand. All this might have seemed out of place in a country house of almost any ordinary description, where the occupant was likely to spend half the year in town; but Mr. Lee had fitted up this place as his principal and permanent residence. The health of his wife demanded quiet; her tastes required beautiful objects, and all these rare articles had been carefully selected for her pleasure. Here she found many a precious gem of art which she had seen in her travels, admired, but never thought to possess. But he had remembered her faintest preference, and the proofs of his unbounded devotion met her at every turn, as we entered, what was, in fact, the blending of an old and new home.