Excerpt from It Was a Lover and His Lass, Vol. 1 of 3

Round about it are avenues of an exotic Splendour, like the building, tall araucarias Of kin to nothing else that flourishes in Scotland, blue-green pines Of a rare species, and around these, in long-drawn circles, lines Of level green terraces, upon which you can walk for miles terraces more fit for Versailles than for Murkley, where the grass is generally wet, and prome nades Of this kind not very practicable for the greater part Of the year. The pines have taken hold of the soil, have thriven and flourished, the araucarias are unequalled in Great Britain. Nature and the landscape have assimilated them, and made them free Of the country in which they are to stand for ages. But the house, being of human-kind, cannot be thus assimilated.

NO kindly growth natru'alises it, no softening of years makes it fit into its place. It is too big and imposing to be run over by honeysuckles and roses like a cottage; it stands like a ghost among all the paths that lead to its blocked-up door. The rows Of melancholy openings where windows ought to be glare out in their empti ness, in contrast with that door which never Opens, and makes all natural access to the place impossible. An army Of tramps might clamber in at the windows, and make carnival in the vacant rooms, but the master Of the house could not without an organised assault find admittance in the recognised way. At night, or when the evening glooms are falling, nothing can be more startling than to stray into the presence Of this huge thing, which is not a habitation, and which seems, all complete yet so incomplete, to have strayed into regions quite uncongenial and out of sympathy with it, where it stands as much out of its element as a stranded boat.

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