of that gentleman's taste in the "decorated" style. "Heraldic
emblazonments, and religious emblems, painting and gilding, stained glass,
and curiously-wrought metal work, imageries and inscriptions, rood loft and
reredos, stone altar and sedilia, metal screenwork, encaustic paving, make up
the gorgeous spectacle."

The doors of the principal entrance are painted red, and have gilt hinges
fashioned in the shape of rampant lions spreading over nearly their entire
surface.

In one of the canopied niches is a figure, representing the present Earl of
Shrewsbury kneeling, with a model of the church in his hand as the founder,
with his "patron," St. John the Baptist, standing behind him.

This Cheadle Church, in which Mr. Pugin has had full scope on a small scale
for the indulgence of his gorgeous faith and fancies, reminds us that at
Oscot College, within sight of the smoke of Birmingham and Wolverhampton,
towns where the best locks, clasps, hasps, bolts, and hinges can be made; the
doors and windows, in deference to Mr. Pugin's mediaeval predilections, are of
the awkward clumsy construction with which our ancestors were obliged to be
content for want of better. On the same principle the floors ought to have
been strewed with rushes, the meat salt, the bread black rye, and manuscript
should supersede print. But it is not so, there is no school in the kingdom
where the youth are better fed, or made more comfortable than at Oscot.

TRENTHAM has a delicious situation on the Trent, which forms a lake in the
park, inhabited by swans and monstrous pike. The Hall used to be one of the
hideous brick erections of the time of pigtails and laced waistcoats,--the
footman style of dress and architecture. But the genius of Barry (that great
architect whom the people on the twopenny steamboats seem to appreciate more
than some grumbling members of the House of Commons) has transformed, without
destroying it, into a charming Italian Villa, with gardens, in which the
Italian style has been happily adapted to our climate; for instance, round-
headed laurels, grown for the purpose, taking the place of orange trees.

This Trentham Hall used to be one of the magical pictures of the coach road,
of which the railway robbed us. For miles before reaching it, we used to
look out for the wooded park, with its herds of mottled deer, and the great
lake, where the sight of the swans always brought up that story of the big
pike, choked like a boa,