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Soo, it matters not how many, the old Earl of Scroope lived at Scroope Manor in Dorsetshire The house was an Elizabethan structure of soht-seers, as are so entlelories, nor was the housekeeper supposed to have a good thing in perquisites fro on to the village street,--facing the village, if the hall-door of a house be the main characteristic of its face; but with a front on to its own grounds froe of Scroope consisted of a straggling street a e at one end, and the Manor-house almost at the other But the church stood within the park; and on that side of the street, for loo in face of the publicans, bakers, grocers, two butchers, and retired private residents whose aluous houses ers Close to the Manor and again near to the church, some favoured few had been allowed to build houses and to cultivate srounds; but these tenements must have been built at a time in which landowners were very much less jealous than they are now of such encroachhbours

The park itself was large, and the appendages to it such as were fit for an Earl's establishment;--but there was little about it that was attractive The land lay flat, and the tiroup itself in picturesque for so beyond the church and far back from the road, intersected with so-called drives, which were unfit for any wheels but those of tions;--and round the whole park there was a broad belt of trees Here and there about the large enclosed spaces there stood solitary oaks, in which the old Earl took pride; but at Scroope Manor there was none of that finished landscape beauty of which the owners of "places" in England are so justly proud

The house was large, and the roorand and spacious There was an enormous hall into one corner of which the front door opened There was a vast library filled with old books which no one ever touched,--huge voluy, and folio editions of the least known classics,--such as men now never read Not a book had been added to it since the commencement of the century, and it may almost be said that no book had been drawn fro the same period There was a suite of roo roo-room was used occasionally, as, in accordance with the traditions of the fauests at the Manor Guests, indeed, at Scroope Manor were not very frequent;--but Lady Scroope did occasionally have a friend or two to stay with her; and at long intervals the country clergy squires were asked, with their wives, to dinner When the Earl and his Countess were alone they used a s-room there was the little chamber in which the Countess usually lived The Earl's own room was at the back, or if the reader pleases, front of the house, near the door leading into the street, and was, of all rooloomiest