at
the door, rubbing his hands in very effervescence of hospitality. He
looked more like my idea of Don Quixote than ever, and yet the likeness
was only external. His respectable housekeeper stood modestly at the door
to bid us welcome; and, while she led the elder ladies upstairs to a
bed-room, I begged to look about the garden. My request evidently pleased
the old gentleman; who took me all round the place, and showed me his
six-and-twenty cows, named after the different letters of the alphabet. As
we went along, he surprised me occasionally by repeating apt and beautiful
quotations from the poets, ranging easily from Shakspeare and George
Herbert to those of our own day. He did this as naturally as if he were
thinking aloud, that their true and beautiful words were the best
expression he could find for what he was thinking or feeling. To be sure
he called Byron "my Lord Byron," and pronounced the name of Goethe
strictly in accordance with the English sound of the letters--"As Goethe
says, 'Ye ever verdant palaces,'" &c. Altogether, I never met with a man,
before or since, who had spent so long a life in a secluded and not
impressive country, with ever-increasing delight in the daily and yearly
change of season and beauty.

When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the
kitchen--for so I suppose the room ought to be called, as there were oak
dressers and cupboards all round, all over by the side of the fire-place,
and only a small Turkey-carpet in the middle of the flag-floor. The room
might have been easily made into a handsome dark-oak dining-parlor, by
removing the oven, and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which were
evidently never used; the real cooking-place being at some distance. The
room in which we were expected to sit was a stiffly furnished, ugly
apartment; but that in which we did sit was what Mr. Holbrook called the
counting-house, where he paid his laborers their weekly wages, at a great
desk near the door. The rest of the pretty sitting-room--looking into the
orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows--was filled with
books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they strewed the
table. He was evidently half ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in
this respect. They were of all kinds--poetry, and wild weird tales
prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with his own
tastes, not because such and such were classical, or established
f