I came amid these reflections to the brow of a
hill, from which I expected to see Glentanner; a
modest-looking yet comfortable house, its walls
covered with the most productive fruit-trees in
that part of the country, and screened from the
most stormy quarters of the horizon by a deep and
ancient wood, which overhung the neighbouring
hill. The house was gone; a great part of the
wood was felled; and instead of the gentlemanlike
mansion, shrouded and embosomed among its old
hereditary trees, stood Castle-Treddles, a huge
lumping four-square pile of freestone, as bare as
my nail, except for a paltry edging of decayed
and lingering exotics, with an impoverished lawn
stretched before it, which, instead of boasting deep
green tapestry, enamelled with daisies, and with
crowsfoot and cowslips, showed an extent of nakedness,
raked, indeed, and levelled, but where
the sown grasses had failed with drought, and
the earth, retaining its natural complexion, seemed
nearly as brown and bare as when it was newly
dug up.
The house was a large fabric, which pretended
to its name of castle only from the front windows
being finished in acute Gothic arches (being, by
the way, the very reverse of the castellated style),
and each angle graced with a turret about the size
of a pepper-box.
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