l old country-houses set amid
pleasant scenes that time and war and fire have spared to us. Macaulay
draws a very unflattering picture of the old country squire, as of the
parson. His untruths concerning the latter I have endeavoured to
expose in another place.[37] The manor-houses themselves declare the
historian's strictures to be unfounded. Is it possible that men so
ignorant and crude could have built for themselves residences bearing
evidence of such good taste, so full of grace and charm, and
surrounded by such rare blendings of art and nature as are displayed
so often in park and garden? And it is not, as a rule, in the greatest
mansions, the vast piles erected by the great nobles of the Court,
that we find such artistic qualities, but most often in the smaller
manor-houses of knights and squires. Certainly many higher-cultured
people of Macaulay's time and our own could learn a great deal from
them of the art of making beautiful homes.

[37] _Old-time Parson_, by P.H. Ditchfield, 1908.

[Illustration: Gothic Chimney, Norton St. Philip, Somerset]

Holinshed, the Chronicler, writing during the third quarter of the
sixteenth century, makes some illuminating observations on the
increasing preference shown in his time for stone and brick buildings
in place of timber and plaster. He wrote:--

"The ancient maners and houses of our gentlemen are yet for the
most part of strong timber. How beit such as be lately buylded are
commonly either of bricke or harde stone, their rowmes large and
stately, and houses of office farder distant fro their lodgings.
Those of the nobilitie are likewise wrought with bricke and harde
stone, as provision may best be made; but so magnificent and
stately, as the basest house of a barren doth often match with
some honours of princes in olde tyme: so that if ever curious
buylding did flourishe in Englande it is in these our dayes,
wherein our worckemen excel and are in maner comparable in skill
with old Vitruvius and Serle."

He also adds the curious information that "there are olde men yet
dwelling in the village where I remayn, which have noted three things
to be marveylously altered in Englande within their sound
remembrance. One is, the multitude of chimnies lately erected,
whereas, in their young dayes there were not above two or three, if so
many, in most uplandish townes of the realme (the religious houses and
mannour places of their lordes alwayes excepted