uld
be in every house the room nearest to heaven, that it should be well
provided with windows commanding an extensive and noble prospect,
and that the walls of the chamber should be lined with bookshelves
containing all the ripest products of human wisdom, such as the Proverbs
of Solomon, Boethius's 'Consolations of Philosophy', the apophthegms
of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, the 'Enchiridion' of Erasmus, and all
other works, ancient or modern, which testify to the nobility of the
human soul. In Crome he was able to put his theories into practice. At
the top of each of the three projecting towers he placed a privy. From
these a shaft went down the whole height of the house, that is to
say, more than seventy feet, through the cellars, and into a series of
conduits provided with flowing water tunnelled in the ground on a level
with the base of the raised terrace. These conduits emptied themselves
into the stream several hundred yards below the fish-pond. The total
depth of the shafts from the top of the towers to their subterranean
conduits was a hundred and two feet. The eighteenth century, with
its passion for modernisation, swept away these monuments of sanitary
ingenuity. Were it not for tradition and the explicit account of them
left by Sir Ferdinando, we should be unaware that these noble privies
had ever existed. We should even suppose that Sir Ferdinando built
his house after this strange and splendid model for merely aesthetic
reasons."

The contemplation of the glories of the past always evoked in Henry
Wimbush a certain enthusiasm. Under the grey bowler his face worked
and glowed as he spoke. The thought of these vanished privies moved
him profoundly. He ceased to speak; the light gradually died out of his
face, and it became once more the replica of the grave, polite hat which
shaded it. There was a long silence; the same gently melancholy thoughts
seemed to possess the mind of each of them. Permanence, transience--Sir
Ferdinando and his privies were gone, Crome still stood. How brightly
the sun shone and how inevitable was death! The ways of God were
strange; the ways of man were stranger still...

"It does one's heart good," exclaimed Mr. Scogan at last, "to hear of
these fantastic English aristocrats. To have a theory about privies
and to build an immense and splendid house in order to put it into
practise--it's magnificent, beautiful! I like to think of them all: the
eccentric milords rolling across E