Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.

MR. CROFTANGRY BIDS ADIEU TO CLYDESDALE.

Alas, how changed from what it once had been!
'Twas now degraded to a common inn. GAY.

An hour's brisk walking, or thereabouts, placed me in front of
Duntarkin, which had also, I found, undergone considerable
alterations, though it had not been altogether demolished like
the principal mansion. An inn-yard extended before the door of
the decent little jointure-house, even amidst the remnants of the
holly hedges which had screened the lady's garden. Then a broad,
raw-looking, new-made road intruded itself up the little glen,
instead of the old horseway, so seldom used that it was almost
entirely covered with grass. It is a great enormity, of which
gentlemen trustees on the highways are sometimes guilty, in
adopting the breadth necessary for an avenue to the metropolis,
where all that is required is an access to some sequestered and
unpopulous district. I do not say anything of the expense--that
the trustees and their constituents may settle as they please.
But the destruction of silvan beauty is great when the breadth of
the road is more than proportioned to the vale through which it
runs, and lowers, of course, the consequence of any objects of
wood or water, or broken and varied ground, which might otherwise
attract notice and give pleasure. A bubbling runnel by the side
of one of those modern Appian or Flaminian highways is but like a
kennel; the little hill is diminished to a hillock--the romantic
hillock to a molehill, almost too small for sight.

Such an enormity, however, had destroyed the quiet loneliness of
Duntarkin, and intruded its breadth of dust and gravel, and its
associations of pochays and mail-coaches, upon one of the most
sequestered spots in the Middle Ward of Clydesdale. The house
was old and dilapidated, and looked sorry for itself, as if
sensible of a derogation; but the sign was strong and new, and
brightly painted, displaying a heraldic shield (three shuttles in
a field diapre), a web partly unfolded for crest, and two stout
giants for supporters, each one holding a weaver's beam proper.
To have displayed this monstrous emblem on the front of the house
might have hazarded bringing down the wall, but for certain would
have blocked up one or two windows. It was therefore established
independent of the mansion, being displayed in an iron framework,
and suspended upon two posts, with as much wood and iron about it
as would have builded a brig; and there it hung, creaking,
groaning, and screaming in every blast of wind, and frightening
for five miles' distance, for aught I know, the nests of thrushes
and linnets, the ancient denizens of the little glen.

When I entered the place I was received