They live in grand old mansions, surrounded with liveried servants, and inspire a mild awe and respectful admiration, not only in the common country people, but in the minds of persons in whom an American would not look for such homage to untitled rank.

They hunt with horses and dogs over the grounds of their tenant farmers, and the latter often act as game-beaters for them at their "shootings." When one of them owns a whole village, church and all, he is generally called "the Squire," but most of them are squired without the definite article.
They still boast of as good specimens of "the fine old English gentleman" as the country can show; and I am inclined to think it is not an unfounded pretension, although I have not yet come in contact with many of the class.
One of this county squirocracy I know personally and well,--and other Americans know him as well as myself,--who, though living in a palace of his own, once occupied by an exiled French sovereign, is just as simple and honest as a child in every feature of his disposition and deportment.

Every year he has a Festival in his park, lasting two or three days.

It is a kind of out-door Parliament and a Greenwich Fair combined, as it would seem at first sight to an incidental spectator.

I do not believe anything in the rest of the wide world could equal this gathering, for many peculiar features of enjoyment.