And it was no difficult task to explain, either, how this had come about. The Rockvilles saw plainly enough the necessity of manuring their lands, but they scorned the very idea of manuring their family. What! that most ancient, honourable, and substantial family suffer any of the common earth of humanity to gather about its roots! The Rockvilles were so careful of their good blood that they never allied it to any but blood as pure and inane as their own. Their elms flourished in the rotten earth of plebeian accumulations, and their acres produced large crops of corn from the sewage of towns and fat sinks, but the Rockvilles themselves took especial care that no vulgar vigour from the real heap of ordinary human nature should infuse a new force of intellect into their race. The Rockvilles needed nothing: they had all that an ancient, honourable, and substantial family could need. The Rockvilles had no necessity to study at school—why should they? They did not want to get on. The Rockvilles did not aspire to distinction for talent in the world—why should they? They had a large estate, and a large estate implies large honour and respect, though the owners of it be simply cyphers. So the Rockville soul—unused from generation to generation—grew “Fine by degrees and beautifully less,” till it tapered off into nothing. Look at the last of a long line in the midst of his fine estate. Tall he was, with a stoop in his shoulders, and a bowing of his head on one side, as if he had been accustomed to stand under the low boughs of his woods, and peer after intruders. And that was precisely the fact. His features were thin and sharp; his nose prominent and keen in its character; his eyes small, black, and peering like a mole’s, or a hungry swine’s. Sir Roger was still oracular on the bench, after consulting his clerk, who was a good lawyer, and looked up to by the neighbouring squires in election matters, for he was an unswerving tory. You never heard of a rational thing that he had said in the whole course of his life; but that mattered little—he was a gentleman of solemn aspect, of stately gait, and of very ancient family. With ten thousand a year, and his rental rising, he was still, however, a man of overwhelming cares. What mattered a fine estate if all the world was against him? And Sir Roger firmly believed that he stood in that predicament. He had grown up to regard the world as full of little beside upstarts, radicals, manufacturers, and poachers. All were banded, in his belief, against the landed interest. It demanded all the energy of his very small faculties to defend himself and the landed aristocracy against them.