Hall had lain empty for a long time—old Frank Edwards, so well known as a sportsman, had been dead for eighteen years, his horses sold, his kennels dismantled, and his son, after so absurdly long a minority, (for his father had capriciously fixed his majority at twenty-three,) only now coming of age; but whether he would reside at Bandvale, or continue in the neighbourhood of Leicester, where his guardian lived, or what he would do, nobody could tell. The estate, we were told, in spite of the economical management of four or five attorneys, and a couple of stewards, was more involved than when old Frank died; and many a time have I sighed, as I ambled past the lodges, and saw grass growing over the drive, contrasting these appearances with the jolly days I had known in the hall, "when the beards wagged all—shall we ever see the like again?" But change passes over all; and Bandvale was not the only place or the only thing that felt its influence. We were all very different from what we were; we had a railway within half an hour's drive; we had a Methodist chapel in the village; we had a clergyman who preached in his surplice, and would have had a hurl off a lame donkey if he had ventured into the saddle; the hounds were given up; you were asked to dinner at half-past seven, and got home again by ten; rather a changed state of affairs since old Frank kept the ball alive, and Parson Holt rode his grey nag over bank and fence, and we had two packs within ten miles, and no Methodists in the village, and no railroad in the county, and every thing was exactly as it ought to be; and we dined at five, and got home—when it pleased Heaven. Sometimes I turned down the avenue, and took a melancholy look at the old Hall. It is a great square house; flanked with two turrets, with fine old stone windows, and a stone porch in the middle. The Bandvale river runs through the park about three hundred yards from the front door, and is crossed by two bridges in the direction of the lodges, east and west; and beyond it rises the upland, all dotted over with clumps of elm—and at the highest part of the park is the church; a great black figure, kneeling on one knee, used to bear up the sun-dial in the centre of the sweep—his leg had given way from the weight of years and the huge globe he supported, and the poor old fellow lay on his back, kicking up the stump of his leg in a most audacious manner, in the very face of the sun. "The great globe itself had dissolved, and left not a wreck behind." They talk of Marius among the ruins of Carthage, and Coliseums unroofed, and temples of Theseus with crumbling pillars—all these are desolate enough; but then, their condition is picturesque: and I doubt whether Marius in the capitol, and the Coliseum newly finished, and the Temple at the time of its consecration, were half such interesting objects as in the days of their decline and fall. But to me the true representative of desolation was the long tufts of grass that grew in old Frank Edwards's stable-yard, the weeds that choked up the hall door, and the broken panes of the great dining-room windows—the spacious yard, the hospitable door, the jocund dining-room. And now young Frank was just coming to his legal age, and we were all forming our guesses and conjectures as to what the youth's proceedings would be when he came into possession. I made sure, if the property was really involved to the extent reported, that he would sell some of the lands he had in other counties; a farm or two he had in Sussex; a tolerable estate in the north; and a foolish marine villa somewhere in Devonshire, and pay off all incumbrances, and settle himself for life at Bandvale Hall. He would still have a very fine fortune; and it had been the family seat since the reign of Charles the Second. All the mothers and aunts in the county thought it was a seat like a Spanish saddle, and would carry double; and it certainly was amazing to see the preparations that were made to get the proper foot in the stirrup. It seemed agreed that for a young gentleman of twenty-three, seventeen was the only admissible age; and to reach that desirable date, as great cruelty was practised on the baptismal register books as on ancient travellers by the bed of Procrustes-girls of twenty-four were shortened by seven years, and little children of fourteen elongated by three. In some families there were three or four daughters all of the same age, yet not the least like twins; brothers and fathers were kept in marching order, ready to be dispatched to make poor Frank's acquaintance the moment he took possession. I also, though unendowed with any possession so valuable as either daughter, or sister, or niece, kept myself prepared to welcome my old friend's son, whenever he arrived.
