Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/258

228 God's creatures,—that stud in white and fleecy clusters the ascent.

In Warlock House, at the time we refer to, lived a gentleman of the name of Brandon. He was a widower, and had attained his fiftieth year, without casting much regret on the past, or feeling much anxiety for the future. In a word, Joseph Brandon was one of those careless, quiescent, indifferent men, by whom a thought upon any subject is never recurred to without a very urgent necessity. He was good-natured, inoffensive, and weak; and if he was not an incomparable citizen, he was, at least, an excellent vegetable. He was of a family of high antiquity, and formerly of considerable note. For the last four or five generations, however, the proprietors of Warlock House, gradually losing something alike from their acres and their consequence, had left to their descendant no higher rank than that of a small country squire. One had been a Jacobite, and had drunk out half a dozen farms in honour of Charley over the water;—Charley over the water was no very dangerous person, but Charley over the wine was rather more ruinous;—the