Mr Brock's house.
Adjoining l'Hyvreuse, or New Ground, is Castle Carey, which has so truly a picturesque effect from the sea and Castle Cornet. (Vide Trees, Directory.)
Castle Carey.
As we diverge from the town, villas become larger until they in almost every respect assume the air and character of noblemen's seats, and perhaps as such Havilland Hall would fall in identity with those of England, as it is a noble quadangular building, supported in front by four lofty columns, and is the present residence of the Governor, General Napier. Connected with the building are spacious grounds and plantations which consist of beautiful meadows through which babbles a rippling brook. At the foot of this splendid mansion, or rather on the other side of the valley, is the family farm and dairy which is got up much after the English style, the whole being the properly of Col. De Havilland, a native of the Island.
Havilland Hall.
The scenery in Guernsey, generally speaking, is not much enriched with sylvan beauty, and perhaps the above mansion, together with St George, and Woodlands are the most conspicuous. Although a dense wood or coppice is hardly known here, nevertheless, there is a good sprinkling of elm and other timber; the former of which is of a peculiar growth and quality, being in its structure not much unlike the poplar. The fields are commonly divided by hedge rows of oak, elm and ash, but in the lowland districts of the Valle with turf banks, surmounted with furze, which grows rapidly for three years, when it is cut for fuel. Should the ground be too wet and swampy for the growth of furze, stone fences are adopted in its stead.
It has been said the social interchanges of life have been much embarrassed among those who dwell in the capital by too nice an attention to the different classes or gradations of rank, in preference to a selection of company founded on the claims of merit and good fellowship; and that the same has been deemed ridiculous and troublesome, insomuch that it even descends to the retail traders of so small an Island possessing no native nobility. The answer to this is quickly rebutted when we deliberately dwell on the proper and just position of a society within a small circumference, who have a moral as well as judicial example to bestrew, lest by too close a connection the stream be defiled, and that excellent justice for which Guernsey has been so long famous, become corrupt and contaminated. Perhaps speaking with evenness and temperament, no spot in the world for upwards of half a century has put forth such pure and undefiled justice as Guernsey, for the rigorous exaction of which the main bulk of the present population feel themselves indebted to their late venerable and respected bailiff.[A]