Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/256

226 still stands an old-fashioned abode—which we shall here term Warlock Manor-House. It is a building of brick, varied by stone copings, and covered in great part with ivy and jasmine. Around it lie the ruins of the elder part of the fabric, and these are sufficiently numerous in extent, and important in appearance, to testify that the mansion was once not without pretensions to the magnificent. These remains of power, some of which bear date as far back as the reign of Henry the Third, are sanctioned by the character of the country immediately in the vicinity of the old manor-house. A vast track of waste land, interspersed with groves of antique pollards, and here and there irregular and sinuous ridges of green mound, betoken to the experienced eye the evidence of a dismantled chase or park, which must originally have been of no common dimensions. On one side of the house, the lawn slopes towards the river, divided from a terrace, which forms the most important embellishment of the pleasure grounds, by that fence to which has been given the ingenious and significant name of "ha! ha!" A few scattered trees of giant growth