Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/127

Rh the blood, who became the mother of Queen Victoria.

Sir John Wentworth, Governor of the Province, was the next tenant of the Lodge. At his death in 1820 his son inherited the estate, and by the latter's will the property descended to Mrs. Gore, a novelist, who was related to the Wentworth family. By the year 1828 the place had fallen into utter disrepair. Haliburton described, in the third series of The Clockmaker, "the tottering fence, the prostrate gates, the ruined grottos, the long and winding avenues . . . overgrown by rank grass and occasional shrubs." Even then the forest was "fast reclaiming its own and the lawns and ornamental gardens relaxing into a state of nature." And yet, bemoaned Haliburton, this had once been the favourite abode "of one who, had he lived, would have inherited the first and fairest empire in the world." Now, as then, it is a spot "set apart and consecrated to solitude and decay." House, offices, arbours, booths have mouldered into dust; only the band pavilion remains amid the gnarled beeches, a gloomy memorial of festivities long forgotten.

Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, visited the ruin in 1860. The Intercolonial's rails now traverse the grounds on the way from Halifax to Bedford, at the head of the Basin.

A pleasant highway joins Bedford to Dartmouth by way of Waverley and the Lakes, From