CHAPTER XIII 



BRAMSHILL 



WHETHER Bramshill is more beautiful in 

 Summer than in Winter is a question I have 

 asked myself ever since I began vo realise 

 what beauty of park, of garden, of far- 

 stretching view, of noble building meant 

 ever since I began dimly to understand the 

 delight of living close to one of the most 

 stately houses of the English Renaissance. 



A peculiar charm hangs about the great 

 country houses of the Elizabethan period. 

 The castles belong to a totally different con- 

 dition of things and people, to a ruder, fiercer, 

 less civilised time. Their towers and walls, 

 where the jackdaws build in the ivy ; their 

 moats, where hoary carp bask and fatten ; 

 their drawbridges, heavy doors, and loop-holed 

 windows, all tell of unrest of the semi-warlike 

 state of feudal days, when each great seigneur 



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