Art Out-of-Doors 
pared for them and could not rightly be 
filled with anything else. 
I can cite no better example of this effect 
than the walled garden which lies in front 
of Charlecote Hall, near Stratford-on-Avon. 
The Hall is still owned, as it was in Shakes- 
peare’s day, by the Lucy family ; and as 
it was built in 1558, six years before Shakes- 
peare’s birth, within its walls must have 
passed his famous interview with Sir Thomas 
Lucy — if, indeed, the deer-poaching story 
be counted a true one. 
It is a fine big Elizabethan house, and its 
courtyard* must be one of the few still pre- 
served in England from days when architec- 
tural gardens were in highest favor. One 
side of this forecourt — to use the contem- 
porary term — is made, of course, by the 
facade of the hall itself. In the centre of 
its opposite side, facing the portal of the 
hall, rises a stately gate-house with a large 
round-arched entrance ; and the rest of the 
enclosure is encircled by walls which are 
* I am writing of this courtyard from a photo- 
graph taken some years ago. Just how it may look 
to-day I do not know. 
148 
