trapesing about with showy gowns and dirty necks, no Jew-looking
fellows with dandy coats, dirty shirts and half heels to their shoes.
A really nice and good town" (Cobbett).

The great show-place and excursion from Warminster is Longleat. To
reach the great house and famous grounds we take the western road
which reaches the confines of the park in a little over four miles and
passes under the imposing mass of Cley Hill, an isolated eminence of
about 900 feet, on the summit of which a curious "ceremony" used to
take place, as at Martinsell, on Palm Sunday. The boys and young men
from neighbouring villages would ascend the hill to play a game with
sticks and balls. Not one could say why, but that it was "always
done." Undoubtedly this was an unconscious reminiscence of a pagan
spring festival.

Longleat is indeed a "stately home of England" and one of the most
famous of those larger mansions that are more in the nature of
permanent museums for the benefit of the public than of homes for
their fortunate possessors. In normal times the galleries are open on
two or three days in the week, according to the seasons, and holiday
crowds come long distances to see the magnificent house and its still
more splendid surroundings, perhaps more than to inspect the art
treasures which form the nominal attraction. Still these are very fine
and should, if possible, be seen.

[Illustration: LONGLEAT.]

The origin of "Long Leat"--the long shallow stream of pond and
lakelets artificially widened and dammed--was, like that of so many
other great houses, a monastic one. An Augustinian Priory stood here
before the Dissolution, but when the Great Dispersal took place it had
already decayed and no great tragedy occurred. Protector Somerset had
a young man attached to his retinue, and in his confidence, named Sir
John Thynne who, when his master lost his head, very adroitly kept his
own, afterwards marrying the heiress of a great London merchant--Sir
Thomas Gresham. This enabled the husband to add greatly to the small
property he had already purchased, which included the old priory
buildings, and the altered state of his fortunes prompted him to erect
a stately residence on the old site. His first efforts were destroyed
by a disastrous fire, but in 1578 the stately house was finished and,
as far as the exterior is concerned, was practically as we see it
to-day. The interior was entirely remodelled at the beginning of the
nineteenth century