ently
upon that which might have presumed (and I believe was really reputed)
to be the very stormiest: yet, whether from counteracting screens of
wood that have since been reared in fortunate situations, or from what
other cause I know not, but undoubtedly at this day no practical
inconvenience is suffered; though it is true, I believe, that in the
earlier years of its history, the house bore witness occasionally, by
dismal wrecks of roof and windows, to the strength and fury of the
wind on one particular quarter. Again, in the internal arrangements
one room was constructed of such ample proportions, with a view to
dancing, that the length (as I remember) was about seventy feet; the
other dimensions I have forgotten. Now, in this instance most people
saw an evidence of nothing but youthful extravagance, and a most
disproportionate attention directed to one single purpose, which upon
that scale could not probably be of very frequent occurrence in _any_
family. This by the way was at any rate a sensible extravagance in my
judgment; for our English mode of building tends violently to the
opposite and most unwholesome extravagance of giving to the very
principal room of a house the beggarly proportions of closets.
However, the sequel showed that in providing for one end, Mr. Wilson
had not lost sight of others: for the seventy-feet room was so divided
by strong folding-doors, or temporary partitions, as in its customary
state to exhibit three rooms of ordinary proportions, and unfolded its
full extent only by special and extraordinary mechanism. Other
instances I might give in which the plan seemed to be extravagant or
inconsiderate, and yet really turned out to have been calculated with
the coolest judgment and the nicest foresight of domestic needs. It is
sufficient to say that I do not know a house apparently more
commodiously arranged than this, which was planned and built with
utmost precipitation, and in the very heyday of a most tempestuous
youth. In one thing only, upon a retrospect at this day of the whole
case, there may appear to have been some imprudence, viz. that timber
being then at a most unprecedented high price, it is probable that the
building cost seven or eight hundred pounds more than it would have
done a few years later. Allowing for this one oversight, the principal
house on the Elleray estate, which at the time was looked upon as an
evidence of Mr. Wilson's flightiness of mind, remains at this day a