t having done away with one more
old-fashioned, out-of-date garden, and substituted for it a few more
acres of artificial ugliness.

He did just one thing that turned out well; he made a large lake in a
hollow of the park and ringed it with rhododendrons, which have since
grown to enormous size. At the end of it he caused to be built a stucco
temple overhung with weeping ashes, designed "to invite Melancholy."
There is no showing that Merchant Jack had any desire to respond to such
an invitation, but it was the fashion of the time, and no doubt he was
pleased with the idea.

Merchant Jack also refurnished the house when his architect had had his
way with it and the workmen had departed. A few good pieces he kept, but
most of the furniture, which had been brought into the house when it was
rebuilt after the fire, disappeared, to make way for heavy mahogany and
rosewood. Some of it went down to the dower house, a little Jacobean
hall in a dark corner of the park, and there is reason to fear that the
rest was sold for what it would fetch.

In all these lamentable activities, good, rich, up-to-date Merchant Jack
was only improving his property according to the ideas of his time, and
had no more idea of committing artistic improprieties than those people
nowadays who buy a dresser from a farm-house kitchen to put in their
drawing-room, and plaster the adjacent walls with soup plates. His
memorial tablet in Kencote church speaks well of him and his memory must
be respected.

But we have left Edward Clinton with his wife and daughter sitting for
so long in the train between Ganton and Kencote, that we must now return
to them without any further delay.

Having got into the railway carriage at the London terminus as a private
gentleman, of no more account than any other first-class passenger, and
weighed only by his potential willingness to pay handsomely for
attentions received, as the successive stages of his journey were
accomplished, he seemed to develop in importance. At Ganton, where a
change had to be made, although it was twenty miles and more from his
own parcel of earth, peaked caps were touched to him, and the
station-master himself, braided coat and all, opened his carriage door,
expressing, as he did so, a hope that the present fair weather would
continue. One might almost, until one had thought it over, have imagined
him to be appealing to the Squire as one who might take a hand in its
continuance if he were