text:  A sub-collector of taxes! in his country-house--with his friends' wives about him in addition to his own--giving parties of the most gorgeous magnificence--splendid masques in honour of a birthday like _Comus_ at Ludlow Castle--bird-huntings where ladies with attendant squires sallied forth in fanciful array armed with silken nets to catch the prey after having wiled them from the trees by blinding them with polished mirrors--horns sounding and music stationed in woody dells--and all carried on with a grandeur like the cavalcades of the duke and duchess in _Don Quixote_