but a small dwelling.  It was his father, George Carvel, my great-grandsire, reared the present house in the year 1720, of brick brought from England as ballast for the empty ships; he added on, in the years following, the wide wings containing the ball-room, and the banquet-hall, and the large library at the eastern end, and the offices.  But it was my grandfather who built the great stables and the kennels where he kept his beagles and his fleeter hounds.  He dearly loved the saddle and the chase, and taught me to love them too.  Many the sharp winter day I have followed the fox with him over two counties, and lain that night, and a week after, forsooth, at the plantation of some kind friend who was only too glad to receive us.  Often, too, have we stood together from early morning until dark night, waist deep, on the duck points, I with a fowling-piece I was all but too young to carry, and brought back a hundred red-heads or canvas-backs in our bags.  He went with unfailing regularity to the races at Annapolis or Chestertown or Marlborough, often to see his own horses run, where the coaches of the gentry were fifty and sixty around the course; where a negro, or a hogshead of tobacco, or a pipe of Madeira was often staked at a single throw.  Those times, my children, are not ours, and I thought it not strange that Mr. Carvel should delight in a good main between two cocks, or a bull-baiting, or a breaking of heads at the Chestertown fair, where he went to show his cattle and fling a guinea into the ring for the winner.

But it must not be thought that Lionel Carvel, your ancestor, was wholly unlettered because he was a sportsman, though it must be confessed that books occupied him only when the weather compelled, or when on his back with the gout.  At times he would fain have me read to him as he lay in his great four-post bed with the flowered counterpane, from the Spectator, stopping me now and anon at some awakened memory of his youth.  He never forgave Mr. Addison for killing stout, old Sir Roger de Coverley, and would never listen to the butler’s account of his death.  Mr. Carvel, too, had walked in Gray’s Inn Gardens and met adventure at Fox Hall, and seen the great Marlborough himself.  He had a fondness for Mr. Congreve’s Comedies, many of which he had seen acted; and was partial to Mr. Gay’s Trivia, which brought him many a recollection.  He would also listen to Pope.  But of the more modern poetry I think Mr. Gray’s Elegy pleased him best.  He would laugh over Swift’s gall and wormwood, and would never be brought by my mother to acknowledge the defects in the Dean’s character.  Why?  He had once met the Dean in a London drawing-room, when my grandfather was a young spark at Christ Church, Oxford.  He never tired of relating that interview.  The hostess was a very great lady indeed, and actually stood waiting for a word with his Reverence, whose whim it was rather to talk to the young provincial.  He was a forbidding figure, in his black gown and periwig, so my grandfather said, with a piercing blue eye and shaggy brow.  He made the mighty to come to him, while young Carvel stood between laughter and fear of the great lady’s displeasure.