old hospital or almshouse, where forty poor people were
maintained; a very old foundation, and over the chimney-piece was
an inscription in brass: 'Orato pro animâ Thomae Bird,' &c. They
brought me a draft of their drink in a brown bowl, tipt with
silver, which I drank off, and at the bottom was a picture of the
Virgin with the child in her arms done in silver. So we took
leave...."

The inscription and the "brown bowl" (which is a mazer cup) still
remain, but the picturesque front of the hospital, built in the reign
of Edward VI, disappeared during the awful "improvements" which took
place during the "fifties." A drawing of it survives in the local
museum.

Maldon, the capital of the Blackwater district, is to the eye of an
artist a town for twilight effects. The picturesque skyline of its
long, straggling street is accentuated in the early morning or
afterglow, when much undesirable detail of modern times below the
tiled roofs is blurred and lost. In broad daylight the quaintness of
its suburbs towards the river reeks of the salt flavour of W.W.
Jacobs's stories. Formerly the town was rich with such massive timber
buildings as still appear in the yard of the Blue Boar--an ancient
hostelry which was evidently modernized externally in Pickwickian
times. While exploring in the outhouses of this hostel Mr. Roe lighted
on a venerable posting-coach of early nineteenth-century origin among
some other decaying vehicles, a curiosity even more rare nowadays than
the Gothic king-posts to be seen in the picturesque half-timbered
billiard-room.

[Illustration: Maldon, Essex. Sky-line of the High Street at twilight]