It is not forty years
since this house was built, and Knox was in his glory; but now the house
is all in decay, while within a stone's-throw of it there is a street of
smart white edifices of one and two stories, occupied chiefly by thriving
mechanics, which has been laid out where Knox meant to have forests and
parks. On the banks of the river, where he intended to have only one
wharf for his own West Indian vessels and yacht, there are two wharves,
with stores and a lime kiln. Little appertains to the mansion except the
tomb and the old burial-ground, and the old fort.
The descendants are all poor, and the inheritance was merely sufficient
to make a dissipated and drunken fellow of the only one of the old
General's sons who survived to middle age. The man's habits were as bad
as possible as long as he had any money; but when quite ruined, he
reformed. The daughter, the only survivor among Knox's children (herself
childless), is a mild, amiable woman, therein totally differing from her
mother. Knox, when he first visited his estate, arriving in a vessel,
was waited upon by a deputation of the squatters, who had resolved to
resist him to the death.
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