lt in early times, and was essentially
old-fashioned, like the part of the city in which it was situated.. My
father, soon after his arrival in America, had fancied and purchased
this gloomy-looking gray stone edifice, with its massive granite steps
(imported at great cost, before the beautiful white-marble quarries had
been developed which abound in the vicinity of, and characterize the
dwellings of, that rare and perfect city), and remodelled its interior,
leaving the outside front of the building, with its screens of ancient
ivy, untouched and venerable, and changing only the exterior aspect of
the back of the mansion. Very striking was the contrast between the rear
and front and exterior and interior of "Monfort Hall," as it was
universally called.

The dark panel-work within had all been rent away, to give place to
plaster glossy as marble, or fine French papers, gilded and painted, or
fresco-paintings done with great cost and labor, and indifferent
success. The lofty ceilings and massive walls formed outlines of
strength and beauty to the large and well-ventilated apartments, which
made it easy to render them almost palatial by the means of such
accessories and appliances as wealth commands, and which were lavished
in this instance.

The back of the house was, however, truly picturesque. Here a bay window
was judiciously thrown out; there a portico appended or hanging balcony
added to break the gray expanse of wall or sullen glare of windows; and
a small gray tower or belfry, containing a clock that chimed the hours,
and a fine telescope, rose from the octagon library which my father had
built for his own peculiar sanctum after my mother's death, and which
formed an ell to the building. The green, grassy, deeply-shadowed lawn
lay behind the mansion, sloping down into a dark, deep dell, across
which brawled a tiny brook long since absorbed by the thirsty earth
thrown out from many foundations of stores and tenements and great
warehouses hard by; a dell where once roses, lilacs, guelder-globes, and
calacanthus-bushes, grew with a vigor that I have nowhere seen
surpassed.

It was not much the fashion then to have rare garden-flowers. Our
conservatory contained a fair array of these, but we had beds of tulips,
hyacinths, and crocuses, basking in the sunshine, and violets and lilies
lying in the shadow such as I see rarely now, and which cost us as
little thought or trouble in their perennial permanence, whereas the