Marmaduke Wyvil, or, The maid's revenge

"In a sequestered vale of merry England, not many miles from the county town of Worcester, there stands, in excellent preservation, even to the present day, one of those many mansions scattered through the land, which-formerly the manor houses of a race, now, like their dwellings, becoming rapidly extinct, the good old English squires-have, for the most part, been converted into farm-houses; since their old-time proprietors have, simultaneously with the growth of vaster fortunes, and the rise of loftier dignities, declined into a humbler sphere."