anufacture, had
carried Sir Roger's estate along with it. It was full of active and
moneyed farmers, and flourished under modern influences. How lucky it
would have been for the Rockville family had it done the same!

But amid this estate there was Sir Roger solitary, and the last of the
line. He had grown well enough--there was nothing stunted about him, so
far as you could see on the surface. In stature, he exceeded six feet.
His colossal elms could not boast of a properer relative growth. He was
as large a landlord, and as tall a justice of the peace, as you could
desire: but, unfortunately, he was, after all, only the shell of a man.
Like many of his veteran elms, there was a very fine stem, only it was
hollow. There was a man, just with the rather awkward deficiency of a
soul.

And it were no difficult task to explain, either, how this had come
about. The Rockvilles saw plainly enough the necessity of manuring their
lands, but they scorned the very idea of manuring their family. What!
that most ancient, honorable, and substantial family, suffer any of the
common earth of humanity to gather about its roots! The Rockvilles were
so careful of their good blood, that they never allied it to any but
blood as pure and inane as their own. Their elms flourished in the rotten
earth of plebeian accumulations, and their acres produced large crops of
corn from the sewage of towns and fat sinks, but the Rockvilles
themselves took especial care that no vulgar vigor from the real heap
of ordinary human nature should infuse a new force of intellect into
their race. The Rockvilles needed nothing; they had all that an ancient,
honorable, and substantial family could need. The Rockvilles had no need
to study at school--why should they? They did not want to get on. The
Rockvilles did not aspire to distinction for talent in the world--why
should they? They had a large estate. So the Rockville soul, unused from
generation to generation, grew--

Fine by degrees, and _spiritually_ less,

till it tapered off into nothing.

Look at the last of a long fine in the midst of his fine estate. Tall he
was, with a stoop in his shoulders, and a bowing of his head on one side,
as if he had been accustomed to stand under the low boughs of his woods,
and peer after intruders. And that was precisely the fact. His features
were thin and sharp; his nose prominent and keen in its character; his
eyes small, black, and peering like a mole's, or a