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Bracebridge Hall: The Hall

The Hall

The ancientest house, and the best for housekeeping in this
county or the next, and though the master of it write but
squire, I know no lord like him.

MERRY BEGGARS.

The reader, if he has perused the volumes of the Sketch Book, will
probably recollect something of the Bracebridge family, with which I
once passed a Christmas. I am now on another visit at the Hall, having
been invited to a wedding which is shortly to take place. The squire's
second son, Guy, a fine, spirited young captain in the army, is about to
be married to his father's ward, the fair Julia Templeton. A gathering
of relations and friends has already commenced, to celebrate the joyful
occasion; for the old gentleman is an enemy to quiet, private weddings.
"There is nothing," he says, "like launching a young couple gaily, and
cheering them from the shore; a good outset is half the voyage."

Before proceeding any farther, I would beg that the squire might not be
confounded with that class of hard-riding, fox-hunting gentlemen so
often described, and, in fact, so nearly extinct in England. I use this
rural title, partly because it is his universal appellation throughout
the neighbourhood, and partly because it saves me the frequent
repetition of his name, which is one of those rough old English names at
which Frenchmen exclaim in despair.

The squire is, in fact, a lingering specimen of the old English country
gentleman; rusticated a little by living almost entirely on his estate,
and something of a humourist, as Englishmen are apt to become when they
have an opportunity of living in their own way. I like his hobby passing
well, however, which is, a bigoted devotion to old English manners and
customs; it jumps a little with my own humour, having as yet a lively
and unsated curiosity about the ancient and genuine characteristics of
my "fatherland."

There are some traits about the squire's family also, which appear to me
to be national. It is one of those old aristocratical families, which, I
believe, are peculiar to England, and scarcely understood in other
countries; that is to say, families of the ancient gentry, who, though
destitute of titled rank, maintain a high ancestral pride; who look down
upon all nobility of recent creation, and would consider it a sacrifice
of dignity to merge the venerable name of their house in a modern title.

This feeling is very much fostered by the importance which they enjoy on
their hereditary domains. The family mansion is an old manor-house,
standing in a retired and beautiful part of Yorkshire. Its inhabitants
have been always regarded through the surrounding country as "the great
ones of the earth;" and the little village near the hall looks up to the
squire with almost feudal homage. An old manor-house, and an old family
of this kind, are rarely to be met with at the present day; and it is
probably the peculiar humour of the squire that has retained this
secluded specimen of English housekeeping in something like the genuine
old style.

I am again quartered in the panelled chamber, in the antique wing of the
house. The prospect from my window, however, has quite a different
aspect from that which it wore on my winter visit. Though early in the
month of April, yet a few warm, sunshiny days have drawn forth the
beauties of the spring, which, I think, are always most captivating on
their first opening. The parterres of the old-fashioned garden are gay
with flowers; and the gardener has brought out his exotics, and placed
them along the stone balustrades. The trees are clothed with green buds
and tender leaves; when I throw open my jingling casement I smell the
odour of mignonette, and hear the hum of the bees from the flowers
against the sunny wall, with the varied song of the throstle, and the
cheerful notes of the tuneful little wren.

While sojourning in this stronghold of old fashions, it is my intention
to make occasional sketches of the scenes and characters before me. I
would have it understood, however, that I am not writing a novel, and
have nothing of intricate plot, or marvellous adventure, to promise the
reader. The Hall of which I treat has, for aught I know, neither
trap-door, nor sliding-panel, nor donjon-keep: and indeed appears to
have no mystery about it. The family is a worthy, well-meaning family,
that, in all probability, will eat and drink, and go to bed, and get up
regularly, from one end of my work to the other; and the squire is so
kind-hearted an old gentleman, that I see no likelihood of his throwing
any kind of distress in the way of the approaching nuptials. In a word,
I cannot foresee a single extraordinary event that is likely to occur in
the whole term of my sojourn at the Hall.

I tell this honestly to the reader, lest when he find me dallying along,
through every-day English scenes, he may hurry ahead, in hopes of
meeting with some marvellous adventure farther on. I invite him, on the
contrary, to ramble gently on with me, as he would saunter out into the
fields, stopping occasionally to gather a flower, or listen to a bird,
or admire a prospect, without any anxiety to arrive at the end of his
career. Should I, however, in the course of my loiterings about this old
mansion, see or hear anything curious, that might serve to vary the
monotony of this every-day life, I shall not fail to report it for the
reader's entertainment.

For freshest wits I know will soon be wearie
Of any book, how grave so e'er it be,
Except it have odd matter, strange and merrie,
Well sauc'd with lies and glared all with glee.[A]

[Footnote A: Mirror for Magistrates.]

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