What is the condition of the country-seat of the absentee proprietor?
The mansion-house deserted and closed; the approaches to it ragged and
grass grown; the chimneys, "those windpipes of good hospitality," as an
old English poet calls them, giving no token of the cheerful fire
within; the gardens running to waste, or, perchance, made a source of
menial profit; the old family servants dismissed, and some rude bailiff,
or country attorney, ruling paramount in the place. The surrounding
cottagers, who have derived their support from the vicinage, deprived of
this, pass into destitution and wretchedness; either abandoning their
homes, throwing themselves upon parish relief, or seeking provision by
means yet more desperate. The farming tenantry, though less immediately
dependent, yet all partake, more or less, in the evil. The charities and
hospitalities which belong to such a mansion lie dormant; the clergyman
is no longer supported and aided in his important duties; the family pew
in the church is closed; and the village churchyard ceases to be a place
of pleasant meeting, where the peasant's heart is gladdened by the
kindly notice of his landlord.
It is the struggle against retrenchment, the "paupertatis pudor et
fuga," which has caused hundreds of English families, of property and
consideration, to desert their family places, and to pass year after
year in residence abroad. At the close of each London season, the
question too often occurs as to the best mode of evading return to the
country; and the sun of summer, instead of calling back the landlord to
his tenants, and to the harvests of his own lands, sends him forth to
the meagre adventures of continental roads and inns.--_Quarterly Rev._
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