stuccoed over; which, as they say in England, is a "great pull." But except
that it was detached and gabled, it belonged quite to the class of city
houses. Its walls were straight and bare, and its windows, though wide,
were short. It might have been deposited in Belgravia without in the least
seeming out of place: it conformed to the rigid London model. It had no
external galleries, no breezy piazzas, no long windows opening upon them,
no doors disposed for propagating draughts. But, indeed, I have never seen
an English house furnished with what we call a piazza; and I must add that
I have rarely known an English summer day on which it would have been
convenient to sit in a propagated draught.

It seems, however, grossly unthankful to say that English country-houses
lack anything when one has received delightful impressions of what they
possess. What is a draughty doorway to an old Norman portal, massively
arched and quaintly sculptured, across whose hollow threshold the eye of
fancy may see the ghosts of monks and the shadows of abbots pass
noiselessly to and fro? What is a paltry piazza to a beautiful ambulatory
of the thirteenth century--a long stone gallery or cloister repeated in two
stories, with the interstices of its carven lattice now glazed, but with
its long, low, narrow, charming vista still perfect and picturesque--with
its flags worn away by monkish sandals, and with huge round-arched doorways
opening from its inner side into great rooms roofed like cathedrals? What
are the longest French windows, with the most patented latches, to narrow
casements of almost defensive aspect set in embrasures three feet deep and
ornamented with little grotesque mediæval faces? To see one of these small
monkish masks grinning at you while you dress and undress, or while you
look up in the intervals of inspiration from your letter-writing, is a
simple detail in the entertainment of living in an ancient priory. This
entertainment is inexhaustible, for every step you take in such a house
confronts you in one way or another with the remote past. You feast upon