His library would have satisfied the ambition of a student of history or belles-lettres.

His gardens, lawn, shrubbery, and flowers would grace the mansion of an independent gentleman.

He had an eye to the picturesque as well as practical.

But I could not but notice, as significant of the tendency to which I have referred, that, on passing a large, outbranching oak standing in the boundary of two fields, he remarked that the detriment of its shadow could not have been less than ten shillings a year for half a century.

As we proceeded from field to field, he recurred to the same subject by calling our attention to the circumference of the shadow cast on the best land of the farm by a thrifty, luxuriant ash, not more than a foot in diameter at the butt.