He
professed a thorough contempt for modern refinements. Grass grew in the
neglected approaches to his mansion.... Awe and silence pervaded the
inhabitants [of Penrith] when the gloomy despot traversed their streets.
He might have been taken for a Judge Jefferies about to open a royal
commission to try them as state criminals... In some years of his life
he resisted the payment of all bills.' Among his creditors was
Wordsworth's father, 'who died leaving the poet and four other helpless
children. The executors of the will, foreseeing the result of a legal
contest with _a millionaire,_ withdrew opposition, trusting to Lord
Lonsdale's sense of justice for payment. They leaned on a broken reed,
the wealthy debtor "Died and made no sign."' [2 _Henry VI,_ act iii. sc.
3.] See De Quincey's _Works,_ iii. 151.
[352] 'Let us not,' he says, 'make too much haste to despise our
neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded
dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the
time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence.' _Works_, ix. 20.
[353] Note by Lord _Hailes_. 'The cathedral of Elgin was burnt by the
Lord of Badenoch, because the Bishop of Moray had pronounced an award
not to his liking. The indemnification that the see obtained was, that
the Lord of Badenoch stood for three days bare-footed at the great gate
of the cathedral.
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