Gothic air; it is ill-placed, shut in by trees, approached only by
a very dilapidated farm-road; and the worst of it is that a curious
and picturesque house was destroyed to build it. It stands in what
was once a very pretty and charming little park, with an ancient
avenue of pollard trees, lime and elm. You can see the old terraces
of the Hall, the mounds of ruins, the fish-ponds, the grass-grown
pleasance. It is pleasantly timbered, and I have an orchard of
honest fruit-trees of my own. First of all I expect it was a Roman
fort; for the other day my gardener brought me in half of the
handle of a fine old Roman water-jar, red pottery smeared with
plaster, with two pretty laughing faces pinched lightly out under
the volutes. A few days after I felt like Polycrates of Samos, that
over-fortunate tyrant, when, walking myself in my garden, I
descried and gathered up the rest of the same handle, the fractures
fitting exactly. There are traces of Roman occupation hereabouts in
mounds and earthworks. Not long ago a man ploughing in the fen
struck an old red vase up with the share, and searching the place
found a number of the same urns within the space of a few yards,
buried in the peat, as fresh as the day they were made. There was
nothing else to be found, and the place was under water till fifty
years ago; so that it must have been a boatload of pottery being
taken in to market that was swamped there, how many centuries ago!
But there have been stranger things than that found; half a mile
away, where the steep gravel hill slopes down to the fen, a man
hoeing brought up a bronze spear-head. He took it to the lord of
the manor, who was interested in curiosities. The squire hurried to
the place and had it all dug out carefully; quite a number of
spear-heads were found, and a beautiful bronze sword, with the
holes where the leather straps of the handle passed in and out. I
have held this fine blade in my hands, and it is absolutely