ent double-barrelled guns, and three stanch
pointers. He attempted to live there, several times, from the 12th of
August till the end of September, and went pluffing disconsolately among
the hills from sunrise to sunset. He has been long dead and buried; and
the Box, they say, is now haunted. It has been attempted to be let
furnished, and there is now a board to that effect hung out like an
escutcheon. Picturesque people say it ruins the whole beauty of the
glen; but we must not think so, for it is not in the power of the
ugliest house that ever was built to do that, although, to effect such a
purpose, it is unquestionably a skilful contrivance. The window-shutters
have been closed for several years, and the chimneys look as if they had
breathed their last. It stands in a perpetual eddy, and the ground
shelves so all around it, that there is barely room for a barrel to
catch the rain-drippings from the slate-eaves. If it be indeed haunted,
pity the poor ghost! You may have it on a lease, short or long, for
merely paying the taxes. Every year it costs some pounds in
advertisements. What a jointure-house it would be for a relict! By name,
WINDY-KNOWE.

Nay, let us not fear to sketch the character of its last inhabitant, for
we desire but to speak the truth. Drunkard, stand forward, that we may
have a look at you, and draw your picture. There he stands! The mouth of
the drunkard, you may observe, contracts a singularly sensitive
appearance--seemingly red and rawish; and he is perpetually licking or
smacking his lips, as if his palate were dry and adust. His is a thirst
that water will not quench. He might as well drink air. His whole being
burns for a dram. The whole world is contracted into a caulker. He would
sell his soul in such extremity, were the black bottle denied him, for a
gulp. Not to save his soul from eternal fire, would he, or rather could
he, if left alone with it, refrain from pulling out the plug, and
sucking away at destruction. What a snout he turns up to the morning
air, inflamed, pimpled, snubby, and snorty, and with a nob at the end
on't like one carved out of a stick by the knife of a schoolboy--rough
and hot to the very eye--a nose which, rather than pull, you would
submit even to be in some degree insulted. A perpetual cough harasses
and exhausts him, and a perpetual expectoration. How his hand trembles!
It is an effort even to sign his name: one of his sides is certainly not
by any means as sound