BUCKHURST PARK. 105 



Our modern architects try to make their rooms mathe- 

 matically square, a series of brick boxes, one on the 

 other like pigeon-holes in a bureau, with flat ceilings 

 and right angles in the corners, and are said to go 

 through a profound education before they can produce 

 these wonderful specimens of art. If our old English 

 folk could not get an arched roof, then they loved to 

 have it pointed, with polished timber beams in which 

 the eye rested as in looking upwards through a tree. 

 Their rooms they liked of many shapes, and not at right 

 angles in the corners, nor all on the same dead level of 

 flooring. You had to go up a step into one, and down 

 a step into another, and along a winding passage into a 

 third, so that each part of the house had its individuality. 

 To these houses life fitted itself and grew to them ; they 

 were not mere walls, but became part of existence. A 

 man's house was not only his castle, a man's house was 

 himself. He could not tear himself away from his 

 house, it was like tearing up the shrieking mandrake by 

 the root, almost death itself. Now we walk in and out 

 of our brick boxes unconcerned whether we live in this 

 villa or that, here or yonder. Dark beams inlaid in the 

 walls support the gables ; heavier timber, placed horizon- 

 tally, forms, as it were, the foundation of the first floor. 

 This horizontal beam has warped a little in the course 

 of time, the alternate heat and cold of summers and 

 winters that make centuries. Up to this beam the 

 lower wall is built of brick set to the curve of the timber, 

 from which circumstance it would appear to be a modern 

 insertion. The beam, we may be sure, was straight 

 originally, and the bricks have been fitted to the curve 

 which it subsequently took. Time, no doubt, ate away 

 the lower work of wood, and necessitated the insertion 

 of new materials. The slight curve of the great beam 



