akes nine years to mature, for
nine years remains in the plenitude of its powers, and for nine years
more declines into an honourable age; and this is also true of claret,
but in claret it goes by sevens.

* * * * *

The open square of the town, which one looks at from the Globe, gives
one a mingled pleasure of reminiscence and discovery. It breaks on one
abruptly. It is as wide as the pasture field, and all the houses are
ample and largely founded. Indeed, throughout this country,
elbow-room--the sense that there is space enough and to spare in such
flats and under an open sky--has filled the minds of builders. You may
see it in all the inland towns of the Fens; and one found it again here
upon the further bank, upon the edge of the Fens; for though Lynn is
just off the Fens, yet it looks upon their horizon and their sky, and
belongs to them in spirit.

In this large and comfortable square a very steadfast and most
considerable English bank is to be discovered. It is of honest brown
brick! its architecture is of the plainest; its appearance is such that
its credit could never fail, and that the house alone by its presence
could conduct a dignified business for ever. The rooms in it are so many
and so great that the owners of such a bank (having become princes by
its success) could inhabit them with a majesty worthy of their new
title. But who lives above his shop since Richardson died? And did old
Richardson? Lord knows!... Anyhow, the bank is glorious, and it is but
one of the fifty houses that I saw in Lynn.

Thus, in the same street as the Globe, was a facade of stone. If it was
Georgian, it was very early Georgian, for it was relieved with ornaments
of a delicate and accurate sort, and the proportions were exactly
satisfying to the eye that looked on it. The stone also was of that kind
(Portland stone, I think) which goes black and white with age, and which
is better suited than any other to the English climate.

In another house near the church I saw a roof that might have been a
roof for a town. It covered the living part and the stables, and the
outhouse and the brewhouse, and the barns, and for all I know the
pig-pens and the pigeons' as well. It was a benediction of a roof--a
roof traditional, a roof patriarchal, a roof customary, a roof of
permanence and unity, a roof that physically sheltered and spiritually
sustained, a roof majestic, a roof eternal. In a word, it was a r