erhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an American street;
but behind these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of
expression, there is probably the substance of the same old town that
wore a Gothic exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem of
England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate
adaptation of what such a people as ourselves would destroy. The new
things are based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive a
massive strength from their deep and immemorial foundations, though with
such limitations and impediments as only an Englishman could endure.
But he likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back; and,
moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him has taken root in his
being, and has grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is
no getting rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In
my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable under the
mouldy accretion, he had better stumble on with it as long as he can.
He presents a spectacle which is by no means without its charm for a
disinterested and unincumbered observer.

When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or institution, appears
in its pristine form, without any attempt at intermarrying it with
modern fashions, an American cannot but admire the picturesque effect
produced by the sudden cropping up of an apparently dead-and-buried
state of society into the actual present, of which he is himself a part.
We need not go far in Warwick without encountering an instance of the
kind. Proceeding westward through the town, we find ourselves confronted
by a huge mass of natural rock, hewn into something like architectural
shape, and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have been one
of King Cymbeline's original gateways; and on the top of the rock, over
the archway, sits a small, old church, communicating with an ancient
edifice, or assemblage of edifices, that look down from a similar
elevation on the side of the street. A range of trees half hides the
latter establishment from the sun. It presents a curious and venerable
specimen of the timber-and-plaster style of building, in which some of
the finest old houses in England are constructed; the front projects
into porticos and vestibules, and rises into many gables, some in a row,
and others crowning semi-detached portions of the structure; the windows
mostly open on hinges, but show a delightful irregularit