ansions, the abode
of our Saxon ancestors; a quiet, sheltered nest, where ages and
generations had alike passed by. The wave of time had produced no
change; the name and the inheritance were the same, and seemingly
destined to continue unaltered by the mutations, the common lot of all
that man labours to perpetuate. This state of things existed at the
date of our story; now, alas! the race of its former possessors is
extinct, their name only remains a relic of things that were--their
former mansion standing,[20] as if in mockery, amidst the hum of
wheels, and in melancholy contrast with the toil and animation of this
manufacturing, money-getting district.

Buckley Hall, to which we allude, is still an object of interest to
the antiquary and the lover of romance, telling of days that are for
ever departed, when the lords of these paternal acres were the
occupants, not impoverishers, of the soil from unrecorded
ages--constituting a tribe, a race of sturdy yeomanry attached to
their country and to the lands on which they dwelt. But they are nigh
extinct--other habits and other pursuits have prevailed. Profuse
hospitality and rude benevolence have given place to habits of
business as they are called, and to a more calculating and
enterprising disposition. The most ancient families have become
absorbed or overwhelmed by the mighty progress of this new element,
this outpouring of wealth as from some unseen source; and in many
instances their names only are recognised in these old and rickety
mansions, now the habitation of the mechanic and the plebeian.

Many of these dwellings remain--a melancholy contrast to the trim
erections, the symbols of a new race, along with new habits and forms
of existence, sufficiently testifying to the folly and the vain
expectations of those who toil and labour hard for a long lease with
posterity.

This mansion, like the rest of our ancestral dwellings of the better
sort, was built of wood, on a stone basement. The outside structure
curiously vandyked in a zigzag fashion with wooden partitions, the
interstices were filled with wicker-work, plastered with well-tempered
clay, to which chopped straw imparted additional tenacity. When newly
embellished, looking like the pattern, black and white, of some
discreet magpie perched on the wooden pinnacles terminating each
gable, or hopping saucily about the porch--that never-failing adjunct
to these homely dwellings. Here, on a well-scoured bench, t