CHAPTER III.

Magnificence and money.--Waterton's mode of life and personal expenses. -Sleeping on planks.-His visits to the chapel.-The "morning gun.' -The razor and the lancet-Reduction of the family estates. -His work at Walton Hall.-Natural advantages of the place. The wall and its cost.-Bargees and their guns.-Instinct of the herons.-Herons and fish-ponds.-Drainage of the ponds.-The moat extended into a lake. - Old Gateway and Ivy-Tower.-Siege by Oliver Cromwell.— Tradition of a musket-ball.- Draw-bridge and gateway in the olden times.-Tradition of a cannon-ball.-Both ball and cannon discovered. -Sunken plate and weapons.-Echo at Walton Hall -West view of lake.--How to strengthen a bank.-Pike-catching. -Cats and pike.— Spot where Waterton fell.

WATERTON AT HOME, and, what a home!

It was not magnificent in the ordinary sense of the word. Such magnificence may be the result of mere wealth, without either taste, imagination, or appreciation. The veriest boor in existence, who happens by some turn of fortune to be put in possession of enormous wealth, need only give the word, and he may revel in more than royal magnificence.

As for the house itself, no expenditure could give it the least pretence to beauty or stateliness. It is one of the worst specimens of the worst era of architecture, and is nothing but a stone box perforated with rows of oblong holes by way of windows.

I tried on all sides to obtain a view of it which would soften down its ugliness, but could not succeed. The

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front of the house is, strange to say, the worst part of it, being a flat, smooth, stone wall, with three rows of oblong windows, eight in a row. The only specimen of architecture which could approach it in this respect is a workhouse of the same date, those of modern times being infinitely superior in architectural effect.

Why the grand old house should have been pulled down to make way for such an edifice is quite inexplicable.

Very few houses will be found with an oak-panelled hall ninety feet in length. Yet all this was destroyed; part of the oak-panelling was used in building a pigeon-house, and the rest was burned. Such was the state of architecture in the days "when George the Third was king."

Unfortunately, no paintings or engravings of this most memorable house are in existence, though there are innumerable plates of the "Seats of the Nobility and

Gentry," most of them in the style satirized by Hogarth in his "Marriage à la Mode."

In fact, the architecture of that era is on a par with the classical costumes of the stage. I have possessed for many years a volume of Shakspeare in which there is a portrait of an actor in the part of Troilus. He is classically costumed as a Trojan in a tight scale cuirass, a short cloak, knee breeches and silk stockings, Roman buskins, a tie wig, a helmet with a vast plume of ostrich feathers, and he is bidding defiance to Diomedes with a toy Moorish sword which would hardly cut off the head of a wax doll.

So if Waterton had desired architectural magnificence, he could not have obtained it, except by pulling the house down, and building another. But, he had no taste for such magnificence, his life being one of rigid, not to say severe, simplicity.

His personal expenses were such as could have been covered by the wages of one of the labourers on his own estate. His single room had neither bed nor carpet. He always lay on the bare boards with a blanket wrapped round him, and with an oaken block by way of a pillow. As has been mentioned, he never touched fermented liquids of any kind, and he took but very little meat.

When I knew him, he always retired to his room at 8 P.M. Few men of his age would have chosen a room at the very top of a large house; but stairs were nothing to Waterton, whose limbs were strengthened by perpetual tree climbing. Punctually at three A.M., being roused by the crowing of a huge Cochin China cock, which he called his morning gun,' he rose from his plank couch, lighted his fire, lay down for half an hour, and was always dressed and closely, or as he called it, 'clean' shaven, by four, when he went into the private chapel which was

next door to his room, and where he usually spent an hour

in prayer.

I had several friendly altercations with him upon shaving, but he would as soon give up the lancet as the razor. He would not even wear a particle of whisker, and kept his thick, snowy hair within half an inch of length. He had not lost a hair, in spite of his advanced age, and I have often thought that if he had allowed his hair and beard to grow to their full luxuriance, a nobler figure could not have visited an artist's dreams.

Then came reading Latin and Spanish books (Don Quixote being always one), and then writing, receiving bailiff's report, &c., until eight, when, at the stroke of Sir Thomas More's clock, breakfast was served. So, he had done a fair day's work and finished breakfast at the time when most persons of his position in life had scarcely awoke. In the next place, he was not a rich mạn.

As a rule, the old Yorkshire families are wealthy, and the Watertons would have been among the wealthiest of them, but for the shameful oppressions to which they were subjected. That most accomplished robber, Henry VIII., had confiscated the greater part of the estates, and what with direct robberies, double taxation, fines, and so forth, the estates were terribly reduced when he came into possession of them. Even if he had wished it, magnificence would not have been attainable, but he achieved more. than magnificence, and with the restricted means at his command, converted a Yorkshire valley into a veritable wonder-land.

In this congenial task he was favoured by circumstances which are not likely to occur again. He possessed the requisite knowledge, a constitution of iron, and a frame of astonishing endurance and activity. He came into possession of the estate as a very young man, only twenty

four years of age, and remained absolute master for nearly sixty years.

It was a pity that he did not bestow as much pains on his estate as on his birds. But he was no practical agriculturist as his father had been. He could not do anything which looked like oppressing his tenants, and the consequence was, that they were habitually in heavy arrears, and often threw up their farms without paying rent, having impoverished the land and enriched themselves.

He loved natural history in all its forms, but his chief pursuit was the study of bird-life, and he modified the grounds to the use of the birds, caring much more for their comfort than his own. For this purpose the grounds were admirably adapted by Nature, and he aided her by art. There were a large moat and a succession of ponds for the accommodation of aquatic birds. There were swampy places where the birds could feed. There were ruined edifices for such birds as chose them for a residence, and the whole of the park was covered with stately trees. Moreover, the house stood on a stone island in the moat, and, as may be seen from the illustration on page 36, permitted the habits of the water-birds to be closely watched.

The first need was obviously to allow the birds to be undisturbed by boys and other intruders, and to prohibit the firing of guns-the only sound which birds seem instinctively to dread. But, as there was a public pathway running in front of the house, he had great difficulty in obtaining permission to close it. This object, however. was at last attained, and he then began his wall. It is of a roughly circular form, the house being near the centre. Nowhere is it less than eight feet high, and where it runs along the canal, it is more than double that height, in order to protect the birds from the guns of bargees.