‘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 
