and as the site of this chapel or any remains of it however slight have not always been found, various positions in various castles have been invented and imagined. Now in many cases, as at Ludlow, there was a distinct chapel, a holy place, entirely devoted to holy purposes; and often also, as in Brougham castle, a small oratory with altar and sedilia designed for the lord alone and his immediate family. But there is now reason to believe that the higher portion of the hall was often used as a kind of chapel. In many halls there is a more ecclesiastical character in the window at the higher end, as for instance at Caldecot; while the hall itself would have been immoderately and absurdly long if this had formed an integral portion of it. Hence probably a screen separated this higher portion which was used for the devotions of the household. So also at Chepstow castle, it will be seen that while all the windows in the lower part of the hall have seats, the richer window in the higher end has none; while the remains of a rich screen shew that this higher portion was divided from the rest. Nor, if we except an extremely small oratory, can any site be found for any chapel.

Might not many of our public institutions, our smaller Unions for instance, which will not, or cannot afford distinct chapels, separate structures, borrow a hint from the medieval castle, and set apart a portion of their large rooms as a sort of consecrated place? We must quote the editor's remarks on the chapel.

"It was," he says, "generally near to the hall, and connected with it by a short passage leading from the dais or upper end of the hall. The east window was large and of an ornamented character, similar to a church window, the altar was placed immediately under it. The sacrarium or small chancel for the use of the priests was the whole height of the building, and in this part there is usually a piscina and locker and sedilia, as in the chancel of a church. The western part or nave of the chapel, as it may be called for the sake of distinction, was frequently divided into two stories by a floor, both open at the east end, or separated from the chancel by a screen only; in these two rooms there were often fire-places, and it would appear that they were not exclusively devoted to sacred purposes; when the chapel was used, the upper room was the place for the lord and his family or guests, the lower room for the domestics, or sometimes the upper room for the ladies." He adds in a note, that "in houses of less magnitude and pretensions where there was no specific chapel, divine service seems to have been performed in the hall."

Would it not be well, if in the large country houses of our nobility and wealthy commoners, which boast excellent billiard rooms and vast stables, but do not all have chapels, there was some more definite provision for the daily spiritual wants of the household? Much might be done without trenching at all on the parish system of which they form a part. Family prayer might be made, not in a dining room or breakfast room, but in some portion of the house wholly given up to that object. It does not appear, as far as we B b

VOL. I.

have been able to learn, that these medieval chapels were consecrated.

We have now passed through the chief portions of one of those ancient domiciles which studded old England, when every man afraid of his neighbour, girded himself round with stout stone walls. In the larger houses it should be mentioned that it was a mark of dignity to have a tower attached to them, which besides "the honour of the thing" was a useful place to fly to in case of any sudden attack. In the border counties these towers, called pele towers, are numerous, and answer to the keep of a castle. It is also comfortable to find, after all that harrowing romances have told, that it is rare to find any underground chambers or dungeons; the medieval castles are commonly wanting in those deep dark rooms where these romances are wont to place "the captive knight." It would delight and profit the more ardent members among the commissioners of sewers, were they to investigate the excellent draining system in all the more important structures; modern houses are far behind them. Many a romantic mind has been interested in the traditions of subterranean passages extending from this abbey to that, as though in dangerous times secret modes of communications and escape, fit frameworks for all kind of adventures, were kept up, when in sober truth these passages were no more than large arched drains descending as fast as they could to some river or low spot.

Of the houses of the poor in country districts what shall we say? Scarcely a trace of a countryman's house remains. In the more unsettled parts they were commonly but turf huts, soon put up and soon pulled down, and this as the editor remarks

"Is strikingly exemplified in the extensive parish of Elsdon, which extends upwards of twenty miles in length from the Scotch border, and contains 74,913 acres; there is not a single house which is a hundred years old, nor is any such remembered except the rectory, which is a fortified tower, and the tower of Otterburn and one or two other little towers."

Space forbids us to follow the editor of the Glossary into his interesting remarks on the Domestic Architecture of towns, or to accompany him in his visit to the English towns in France of the Edwardian period. We must refer our readers to the work itself, which is especially interesting both as regards letter-press and illustration in its sketches of the Domestic Architecture of France. We have been stealing a good deal already from his volume, and though there is some temptation to add to our thefts when we have once begun, we are urged by what remains we have of moral principle to forbear. Besides, our readers may have had enough, for one meal, of facts concerning the Domestic Architecture of the middle ages. The volumes themselves have pictures, excellent, admirable pictures, which lighten the reader's journey, and these will give a far better description of the castle homes of our forefathers than our pen is able to effect.

THE ROSE NURSERY AT MARESFIELD.

EVERY one knows how far a man will go in a foreign country, to see something that, at home, he might have visited any day he chose. I confess that this has been somewhat the case with myself. I took a great deal of trouble to see the Bloemen Tuin when I was at Haarlem, because it is the finest tulip garden in Europe. But the largest rose nursery in the world, because it lies close to my own house, I never happened to visit till yesterday. And yet I suppose no one would compare a tulip to a rose. True, our rose cultivators are far enough from having excited the mania that once offered in Holland five hundred pounds and a new carriage with two horses for a root of the Semper Augustus; or four hundred pounds for one grain from the bulb of the Admiral Leifken. And I hope we may never see our old garden favourites, in any shape or way, turned into a Stock Exchange speculation. I trust we shall not have the bulls tossing up, or the bears trampling down the Comte de Flandres or the Garibaldi, and trying to turn a few more pounds out of that which was fed with dew, and is a lawful subject of speculation to bees only. No;-let us leave roses to the poets: and the Dutch may make their gaudy, showy, flaunting tulips, a stock-jobbing business if they please.

However, "lips though blooming must be fed," as we all know; and roses, though in the same category, must be fed and nursed also. If they are to be nursed, there must be nurseries. And it is to the largest of these that I am now going to take you, if you will do me the favour of bearing me company;-I mean Wood's Rose Nursery at Mares

field.

Maresfield lies just at the southern extremity of the old forest of Sussex, that under the various names of Ashurst and Telsata, stretched from right to left through the centre of that county. Now, indeed, those venerable trees are almost utterly destroyed; but a few here and there stand

about like veterans maintaining some important post after the rout of an army. And all round Mayfield, and Pippingford, and Plasket, the traveller will still find lovely woodland scenery; though he must mount to Gill's Lap or to Crowborough Beacon to comprehend what an immense tract of forest stretched over the country, before it was burnt in the iron furnaces that have long since been extinguished for lack of fuel.

A somewhat rutty cross lane, if you are coming from the north, will make you anxious for the springs of your carriage, before you reach your destination; unless you prefer going round two miles on the Lewes road. I confess that, in that solitary place, with grey sand rocks peering out all around you, and here and there a wild oak copse on the edge of a little ravine, it would seem as reasonable to expect a rose garden as to look for violets on Ludgate Hill, or a palm-tree on Woolwich Common. But so it is. The sandy soil suits the roses :-Mr. Wood's paternal care suits the soil; and the result is what we shall presently see. You enter by a lodge and drive up to the proprietor's house. So large a business requires a division of labour. He superintends the men; his son, who resides at not a gun-shot from him, occupies himself with the naming and labelling the flowers, and with the printing. The conveyance of the roses also takes up a good deal of arrangement and time, as the nearest railway station is, and is like to remain, ten miles off. Lewes is that distance, Tunbridge Wells is three miles further.

Now, if you please, we will take a walk through the garden, and whoever is our guide, we are sure of the greatest courtesy that can be shewn. It contains about eighty acres, and is very hilly. There are not many prettier sights, I think, than this bed of standard roses sloping down to yonder little stream; the sun bringing out their various flushes of beauty in very lively contrast with the brown haymows in the field beyond, the redder pinnacles of rock that rise up here and there through the turf, and the deep green of Hendle Wood that crowns the opposite slope. I am afraid that these same hills do not find so much favour in the gardener's eyes as they do in mine. My guide complains of them a good deal, and indeed

rather reminds me of Dr. Thomas Burnet, who, in his Theory of the Earth, maintains that originally it must have been a perfect flat, because it is inconsistent with the goodness of a beneficent Creator to form such unsightly excrescences as mountains.

These eighty acres, be the same more or less, as the lawyers say, give employment during the season, that is, for the three spring months, to sixty-two men. Their wages vary very much with their skill and knowledge. The highest branch of the art is that of the budders; the head budder can average about sixteen shillings a week. This budding requires clever fingers, but needs practice more than any thing else; practice to acquire, and practice to retain. (There are other things, by the way, that do that besides the art in question.) A good budder, five years out of practice, has all to begin over again. A firstrate hand, under average circumstances, will bud a hundred roses in an hour; but something depends on the weather, and a good deal more on the kind of flower. Thus, he could not accomplish more than fifty moss roses in the same time. The tying is another department; there are six tyers to the six budders; esquires, in fact, and knights. The budding, which commences in July, is always finished by the end of September. But it is not to the men in active employment alone that these rose gardens give a wholesome occupation. All the labourers round are encouraged to bring briars for sale for the purpose of setting;-last autumn Mr. Wood paid away as much as £200 for these. There is no certain price; it varies with the condition of the specimen. Near the last enclosed part of the garden you may see the briar nursery, and fine healthy young briars they are one naturally thinks of the amount of patching and darning the good housewives of Nutley and Maresfield must have had too in consequence of the collection.

The first question one asks is; How many varieties of roses have you for sale? It seems, however, impossible to get an answer; old obsolete kinds, fashionable beauties of former years, linger here and there about the garden, but are not recommended: of other sorts it is just possible that none may be at the moment forthcoming. About six hundred various kinds may be considered as stock roses, and every