Page:Dramas 1.pdf/135

Rh

There was a burn (as they call it) running past the house, with water enough in it to have beautified the domains of a prince; but with such an impetuous, angry, perverse sprite of a stream, spade or shovel never contended. It would neither serpentine, sweep, nor expand in any direction, but as it pleased its own self.

And having no plan. Sir Level, it would, of course, have no taste.

Ah! sad discouraging work there for improvers!

Was there nothing to be done?

I could, no doubt, have collected its stores in the dell beneath, and made as fine a sheet of artificial water as heart could desire; but what purpose could this have answered with a lake fronting the house, in which you might have floated half the small craft of the British navy?

A perverse circumstance, indeed.

In short, all that I could do was to remove some rough woody knolls that intervened, and, instead of a partial view of the lake, open it