CHAPTER XXV.
Give ye, Britons, then, Your sportive fury, pitiless to pour Loose on the nightly robber of the fold.
Him from his craggy winding haunts unearth'd, Let all the thunder of the chase pursue.
THOMSON'S Seasons.
Brown rose early in the morning and walked out to look at the establishment of his new friend.

All was rough and neglected in the neighbourhood of the house;--a paltry garden, no pains taken to make the vicinity dry or comfortable, and a total absence of all those little neatnesses which give the eye so much pleasure in looking at an English farm-house.

There were, notwithstanding, evident signs that this arose only from want of taste or ignorance, not from poverty or the negligence which attends it.

On the contrary, a noble cow-house, well filled with good milk-cows, a feeding-house, with ten bullocks of the most approved breed, a stable, with two good teams of horses, the appearance of domestics active, industrious, and apparently contented with their lot; in a word, an air of liberal though sluttish plenty indicated the wealthy fanner.

The situation of the house above the river formed a gentle declivity, which relieved the inhabitants of the nuisances that might otherwise have stagnated around it.