zzas, 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 mediaeval 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
picturesqueness, you inhale history. Adjoining the house is a beautiful
ruin, part of the walls and windows and bases of the piers of the
magnificent church administered by your predecessor the abbot. These relics
are very desultory, but they are still abundant, and they testify to the
great scale and the stately beauty of the abbey. You may lie upon the grass
at the base of an ivied fragment, measure the girth of the great stumps of
the central columns, half smothered in soft creepers, and think how strange
it is that in this quiet hollow, in the midst of lonely hills, so exquisite
and elaborate a work of art should have arisen. It is but an hour's walk to
another great ruin, which has held together more completely. There the
central tower stands erect to half it