finest potato-garden in the county; another got a hundred
guineas for his good-will of a bit of stony land that wouldn't feed
a goat; here was a slated house no one would look at, there was a mud
hovel a Lord and two Members of Parliament were outbidding each other
over these three weeks. Could anything be more arbitrary or inexplicable
than this? In fact, it almost seemed as if the old, the ruinous, the
neglected, and the unprofitable had now usurped the place of all that
was neat, orderly, or beneficial.

If we have suffered ourselves to be led into these remarks, they are
not altogether digressionary. The Hermitage, we have said, was doomed.
Common report alleged that the Queen had selected the spot for her
future residence, and of a truth it was even worthy of such a destiny.
Whether in reality royalty had made the choice, or that merely it
was yet a speculation in hope of such an event, we cannot say, but an
accomplished architect had already begun the work of reconstruction,
and more than two-thirds of the former building were now demolished. The
fragment that still remained was about the oldest part of the cottage,
and not the least picturesque. It was a little wing with three gables to
the front, the ancient framework, of black oak, quaintly ornamented
with many a tasteful device and grim decoration. A little portico, whose
columns were entirely concealed by the rich foliage of a rhododendron,
stood before the windows, whose diamond panes told of an era when glass
bore a very different value; a gorgeous flower-plat, one rich expanse
of rare tulips and ranunculi, sloped from the portico to the river, over
which a single plank formed a bridge. The stream, which was here
deep and rock-bottomed, could be barely seen between the deep hanging
branches of the weeping-ash; but its presence might be recognized by
the occasional plash of a leaping trout, or the still louder stroke of
a swan's wing as he sailed in solemn majesty over his silent domain.
So straggling and wide-spreading had been the ancient building, that,
although a part of the condemned structure, the clank of the mason's
trowel and the turmoil of the falling materials could scarcely be heard
in this quiet, sequestered spot. Here Sybella Kellett still lived,--left
behind by her great protectors,--half in forgetfulness. Soon after the
triumph of the Ossory Bank they had removed to Dublin, thence to
London, where they now awaited the passage of a special bill