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Novels and Tales of the Author of Waverley (8)
Novels and Tales of the Author of Waverley - 8 Author:Walter Scott Volume: 8 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1822 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a m... more »illion books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. Give, ye Britons, then, Your sportive fury, pitiless to pour Loose on the nightly robber of the fold. Him, from his craggy winding haunts unearth'd. Let all the thunder of the chase pursue. Thomson' Seatoiu. Brown rose early in the morning, and walked out to look at the establishment of his new friend. All was rough and neglected in the neighbourhood of the house; -- a paltry garden, no pains taken to make the vicinity dry or comfortable, and a total absence of all those little neatnesses which give the eye so much pleasure in looking at an English farm-house. There were, notwithstanding, evident signs that this arose only from want of taste or ignorance, not from poverty, or the negligence which attends it. On the contrary, a noble cow-house, well filled with good milk-cows, a feeding-house, with ten bullocks of the most approved breed, a stable, with two good teams ofhorses, the appearance of domestics, active, industrious, and apparently contented with their lot; in a word, an air of liberal though sluttish plenty indicated the wealthy farmer. The situation of the house above the river formed a gentle declivity, which relieved the inhabitants of the nuisances which might otherwise have stagnated around them. At a little distance was the whole band of children, playing and building houses with peats around a huge doddered oak-tree, which was called Charlie's Bush, from some tradition respecting an old freebooter who had once inhabited the spot. Between the farm-house and the hill-pasture was a deep morass, termed in that country a slack -- it had once been the defence...« less