"He knows where he is going," said my
companion, laughing, "and is eager to arrive in time for some of
the merriment and good cheer of the servants' hall. My father,
you must know, is a bigoted devotee of the old school, and prides
himself upon keeping up something of old English hospitality. He
is a tolerable specimen of what you will rarely meet with
nowadays in its purity, the old English country gentleman; for
our men of fortune spend so much of their time in town, and
fashion is carried so much into the country, that the strong rich
peculiarities of ancient rural life are almost polished away. My
father, however, from early years, took honest Peacham* for his
textbook, instead of Chesterfield; he determined in his own mind
that there was no condition more truly honorable and enviable
than that of a country gentleman on his paternal lands, and
therefore passes the whole of his time on his estate. He is a
strenuous advocate for the revival of the old rural games and
holiday observances, and is deeply read in the writers, ancient
and modern, who have treated on the subject. Indeed, his favorite
range of reading is among the authors who flourished at least two
centuries since, who, he insists, wrote and thought more like
true Englishmen than any of their successors.
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