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In London Mr. Smithson had created a palace; but it was a new
palace, which still had a faint flavour of bricks and mortar, and which
was apt to remind the spectator of that wonderful erection of Aladdin,
the famous Parvenu of Eastern story. Here, in Berkshire, Mr. Smithson
had dropped into a nest which had been kept warm for him for three
centuries, aired and beautified by generations of a noble race which had
obligingly decayed and dwindled in order to make room for Mr. Smithson.
Here the Parvenu had bought a home mellowed by the slow growth of years,
touched into poetic beauty by the chastening fingers of time. His artist
friends told him that every brick in the red walls was 'precious,' a
mystery of colour which only a painter could fitly understand and value.
Here he had bought associations, he had bought history. He had bought
the dust of Elizabeth's senators, the bones of her court beauties. The
coffins in the Mausoleum yonder in the ferny depths of the Park, the
village church just outside the gates--these had all gone with the
property.


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