The Life of a Country Gentleman

He determined in his own mind that there was no condition more truly honorable and enviable than that of a country gentleman on his paternal lands. His favorite range of reading is among the authors who flourished at least two centuries since the last century. He even regrets sometimes that he had not been born a few centuries earlier when England was itself and adds peculiar manners and customs. Without any rival gentry near him he has an opportunity of indulging the bent of his own humor without molestation.