house was kept by Mrs Carbury herself,
who marked and gave out her own linen, made her own preserves, and
looked to the curing of her own hams. In the year 1800 the Carbury
property was sufficient for the Carbury house. Since that time the
Carbury property has considerably increased in value, and the rents
have been raised. Even the acreage has been extended by the enclosure
of commons. But the income is no longer comfortably adequate to the
wants of an English gentleman's household. If a moderate estate in
land be left to a man now, there arises the question whether he is not
damaged unless an income also be left to him wherewith to keep up the
estate. Land is a luxury, and of all luxuries is the most costly. Now
the Carburys never had anything but land. Suffolk has not been made
rich and great either by coal or iron. No great town had sprung up on
the confines of the Carbury property. No eldest son had gone into
trade or risen high in a profession so as to add to the Carbury
wealth. No great heiress had been married. There had been no ruin,--no
misfortune. But in the days of which we write the Squire of Carbury
Hall had become a poor man simply through the wealth of others. His
estate was supposed to bring him in L2,000 a year. Had he been content
to let the Manor House, to live abroad, and to have an agent at home
to deal with the tenants, he would undoubtedly have had enough to live
luxuriously. But he lived on his own land among his own people, as all
the Carburys before him had done, and was poor because he was
surrounded by rich neighbours. The Longestaffes of Caversham,--of which
family Dolly Longestaffe was the eldest son and hope,--had the name of
great wealth, but the founder of the family had been a Lord Mayor of
London and a chandler as lately as in the reign of Queen Anne. The
Hepworths, who could boast good blood enough on their own side, had
married into new money. The Primeros,--though the goodnature of the
country folk had accorded to the head of them the title of Squire
Primero,--had been trading Spaniards fifty years ago, and had bought
the Bundlesham property from a great duke. The estates of those three
gentlemen, with the domain of the Bishop of Elmham, lay all around the
Carbury property, and in regard to wealth enabled their owners
altogether to overshadow our squire. The superior wealth of a bishop
was nothing to him. He desired that bishops should be rich, and was
among those who thought that t