Page:Headlong Hall - Peacock (1816).djvu/42

 CHAP. IV.

," said Mr. Milestone, after they had walked a few paces, "these grounds have never been touched by the finger of taste."

"The place is quite a wilderness," said Squire Headlong: "for, during the latter part of my father's life, while I was finishing my education, he troubled himself about nothing but the cellar, and suffered every thing else to go to rack and ruin. A mere wilderness, as you see, even now in December; but in summer, a complete nursery of briers, a forest of thistles, a plantation of nettles, without any live stock, but goats, that have eaten up all the bark of the trees. Here you see is a pedestal of a statue, with only half a leg and