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 hungry swine’s.  Sir Roger was still oracular on the bench, and after consulting his clerk, a good lawyer,—­and looked up to by the neighboring squires in election matters, for he was an unswerving tory.  You never heard of a rational thing that he had said in the whole course of his life; but that mattered little, he was a gentleman of solemn aspect, of stately gait, and of a very ancient family.

With ten thousand a-year, and his rental rising, he was still, however, a man of overwhelming cares.  What mattered a fine estate if all the world was against him?  And Sir Roger firmly believed that he stood in that predicament.  He had grown up to regard the world as full of little besides upstarts, radicals, manufacturers, and poachers.  All were banded, in his belief, against the landed interest.  It demanded all the energy of his very small faculties to defend himself and the world against them.

Unfortunately for his peace, a large manufacturing town had sprung up within a couple of miles of him.  He could see its red-brick walls, and its red-tiled roofs, and its tall smoke-vomiting chimneys, growing and extending over the slopes beyond the river.  It was to him the most irritating sight in the world; for what were all those swarming weavers and spinners but arrant radicals, upstarts, sworn foes of ancient institutions and the landed interests of England?  Sir Roger had passed through many a desperate conflict with them for the return of members to parliament.  They brought forward men that were utter wormwood to all his feelings, and they paid no more respect to him and his friends on such occasions than they did to the meanest creature living.  Reverence for ancient blood did not exist in that plebeian and rapidly multiplying tribe.  There were master manufacturers there actually that looked and talked as big as himself, and entre nous, a vast deal more cleverly.  The people talked of rights and franchises, and freedom of speech and of conscience, in a way that was really frightful.  Then they were given most inveterately to running out in whole and everlasting crowds on Sundays and holidays into the fields and woods; and as there was no part of the neighborhood half so pleasant as the groves and river banks of Rockville, they came swarming up there in crowds that were enough to drive any man of acres frantic.

Unluckily, there were roads all about Rockville; foot roads, and high roads and bridle roads.  There was a road up the river side, all the way to Rockville woods, and when it reached them, it divided like a fork, and one pony or foot-path led straight up a magnificent grove of a mile long, ending close to the hall; and another ran all along the river side, under the hills and branches of the wood.