Woodburn Grange: A story of English country life; vol. 3 of 3Howitt, William
General
Woodburn Grange: A story of English country life; vol. 3 of 3
Howitt, William
Religious fiction
And with what different feelings does the good Simon Degge look
down from his lofty eyrie over the princely expanse of meadows,
and over the glittering river, and over the stately woods to where
Great Castleborough still stretches farther and farther its red-brick
walls, its red-tiled roofs, and its tall, smoke-emitting chimneys!
There he sees no haunts of crowded men, enemies to himself or to any
one. No upstarts, no envious opponents, but a vast family of human
beings, all toiling for the good of their families and their country.
All advancing, some faster, some slower, to a better education, a
better social condition, a better conception of the principles of art
and commerce, a clearer recognition of their rights and duties, and a
more cheering faith in the upward tendency of humanity.
Looking on this interesting scene from his distant and quiet home,
Simon Degge sees what blessings flow—and deeply he feels them in
his own case—from the circulation not only of trade but of human
reciprocities. How this corrects the mischiefs, moral and physical,
of false systems and rusty prejudices, and he ponders not on poachers
and encroachers, but on schemes of no ordinary beauty and beneficence
yet to reach his beloved town through him. He sees lecture halls and
academies, means of sanitary purification and delicious recreation,
in which baths and wash-houses and airy homes figure largely, whilst
the public walks round the town are still farther extended, including
woods, hills, meadows, and rivers, in a circuit of many miles. There
he lives and labours, around him a noble family of sons and daughters
to perpetuate his labours and his virtues.
And what a change has fallen on all the country and the families,
rich and poor, around! The friends of Sir Roger have fallen out
of the circuit, as it were. The old leaven of heart-burnings and
conflicting principles has died out from amongst those in whom we
are most interested. In that lovely little district, which includes
Cotmanhaye, Woodburn, Rockville, Bilts’ Farm, Fair Manor, and
Castleborough, the abodes of the Claverings, the Woodburns, Degges,
and Heritages, the old sunny and Arcadian days have returned. Young
families are springing up here and there, bringing with them new
floods of happiness, and a spirit of peace and harmony floats over
all that charmed region, and from no cause more conspicuously than
from the simple circumstance of the providential removal of one
single man out of so many thousands—THE LAST OF A LONG LINE.
No longer antagonist—no longer mutually irritant, the towers and
woods of Rockville look down with an affectionate smile on the russet
roof and green paddocks of WOODBURN GRANGE.
THE END.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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