He breathes the pure air as freely and lolls as
luxuriously under the shade as the lord of the soil; and if he
has not the privilege of calling all that he sees his own, he has
not, at the same time, the trouble of paying for it and keeping
it in order.
I now found myself among noble avenues of oaks and elms, whose
vast size bespoke the growth of centuries. The wind sounded
solemnly among their branches, and the rooks cawed from their
hereditary nests in the tree-tops. The eye ranged through a long
lessening vista, with nothing to interrupt the view but a distant
statue and a vagrant deer stalking like a shadow across the
opening.
There is something about these stately old avenues that has the
effect of Gothic architecture, not merely from the pretended
similarity of form, but from their bearing the evidence of long
duration, and of having had their origin in a period of time with
which we associate ideas of romantic grandeur. They betoken also
the long-settled dignity and proudly-concentrated independence of
an ancient family; and I have heard a worthy but aristocratic old
friend observe, when speaking of the sumptuous palaces of modern
gentry, that "money could do much with stone and mortar, but
thank Heaven! there was no such thing as suddenly building up an
avenue of oaks.
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