wheresoever they may be wanted. Six attic windows jut out from the
low-tiled roof. At the corner of the house is a high pinnacled buttress
rising the full height of the wall; five buttresses flank the side wall,
built so that they shade the lower windows from the morning sun,--in one
place reaching to the sill of an upper window. At the further end of the
wall are two Gothic windows, claustral remnants, lighting now perhaps
the dining-hall where cousin Molle and Dorothy sat in state, or the
saloon where the latter received her servants. There are still cloisters
attached to the house, at the other side of it maybe. Yes, a sleepy
country house, the warm earth and her shrubs creeping close up to the
very sills of the lower windows, sending in morning fragrance, I doubt
not, when Dorothy thrust back the lattice after breakfast. A quiet
place,--"slow" is the accurate modern epithet for it--"awfully slow;"
but to Dorothy a quite suitable home, at which she never repines.

This etching by Thomas Fisher, of December 26, 1816, is the more
valuable to us since the old Chicksands Priory no longer remains, having
suffered martyrdom at the bloody hands of the restorer. For through this
partly we have attained to a knowledge of Dorothy's surroundings; and
through the baronetages, peerages, and the invincible heaps of
genealogical records, we have gathered some few actual facts necessary
to be known of Dorothy's relations, her human surroundings, their lives
and actions. And we shall not find ourselves following Dorothy's story
with the less interest that we have mastered these details about the
Osbornes of Chicksands.

Temple, too, claims the consideration at our hands of a few words
concerning his near relatives and their position in the country. As
Macaulay tells us, he was born in 1628, the place of his birth being
Blackfriars in London.