lossal figures which appear in the pargeting over
its gateway, is a building which evidently grew with the needs of the
town, and a study of its architectural features is curiously
instructive.

The following extract from Pepys's _Diary_ is interesting as referring
to Saffron Walden:--

"1659, Feby. 27th. Up by four o'clock. Mr. Blayton and I took
horse and straight to Saffron Walden, where at the White Hart we
set up our horses and took the master to show us Audley End House,
where the housekeeper showed us all the house, in which the
stateliness of the ceilings, chimney-pieces, and form of the whole
was exceedingly worth seeing. He took us into the cellar, where we
drank most admirable drink, a health to the King. Here I played on
my flageolette, there being an excellent echo. He showed us
excellent pictures; two especially, those of the four Evangelists
and Henry VIII. In our going my landlord carried us through a very
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 anima 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 Got