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primitive, but fairly claiming to be picturesque as well, with its spreading green and small sheet of water, beside which stands the rural hostel. An artist might find more than one picture at this spot. We noticed here, what we have now and again, though not very frequently, observed in various other parts of the country, the name of the village plainly painted on the Post Office. This information, being no news for the inhabitants, must of course be for the benefit of travellers by road, and as these now are few and far between, we presume that the name of the place being thus shown is a relic of the past coaching-days not yet (in these parts, where changes come slowly and ancient customs linger still) improved away.

If Herongate is picturesque in itself, it is blest with two of the ugliest places of worship, I think, that we have ever come upon. I make this statement after due deliberation, for in course of our many drives through different portions of England (covering altogether some thousands of miles) we have certainly come across not a few unique specimens of ungainly structures; but these, I verily believe, excel them all for perfected ugliness, for it almost seems as if there could be a perfection of ugliness as well as a perfection of beauty.

The first of the two edifices in question was a small square brick structure, the design of which was surely taken from a box, with holes cut in for windows and a top just to keep the rain out-simplicity itself, but without any added charm of picturesqueness. We learnt from a notice-board that this was the

Peculiar People's Chapel, and a very peculiar people we thought they must be, to make no attempt (even if unsuccessful) in any way to beautify or adorn the paltry and painfully plain edifice that manifestly they deem good enough for the God they worship. Its plainness would almost suffice to have disgusted a Puritan, had it been erected in his day. Yet in saying all this, I must not forget that even in wealthy and luxurious London but too frequently it is merely 'the outside of the platter' that is beautified, for is it not a fact that very many of the sacred edifices that have been erected there of late years have those portions of them that do not face the street, and are therefore not seen by the multitude, as plainly and cheaply built as possible? Outside show, a pitiful veneer on a house devoted to the worship of the all-seeing God:

The front he makes of stone, as fine as any abbey,

And then to cheat his Lord, he makes the back part shabby.

The other edifice was the church of Herongate, finely situated on rising ground, a short distance from the village, and, though the assertion may appear an anomaly, this actually had a kind of fascination for us on account of its very brazen ugliness. The massive tower of brick is in no style of architecture whatever, as far as I am aware. From an inscription upon it we learnt that it was built in the year of grace, if not of taste, MDCCXXXIV. This precious structure, as far as our experience went, was 'the exception that proves the rule' as to the antiquarian and archæological interest of the country churches of this portion of England. But what could

FREAKS IN BUILDING.

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one expect of an eighteenth-century church? As seen from a short way off, we really thought that this pile of bricks was the engine-house belonging to some waterworks, and ugly even for that!

Who was the architect of this strange erection, I wonder, and what manner of man was he? It struck us forcibly that he had striven in this tower to be original, anxious above all things to show his own cleverness, disregardful of the time-tried work of others, possibly it may be that in his pride he conceived the idea of inventing a new style of architecture altogether. A man who would design a church thus must surely be very vain or very stupid, or both.

It

People who build should bear in mind how great is their responsibility, for even one such eyesore in bricks and mortar as this, visible for miles around, spoils the landscape to a greater or less extent. asserts itself and attracts the eye whether it will or no; there is no escape from it. I write feelingly in the matter, for I know more than one pretty peep of country whose sylvan loveliness, so charming and restful to the town-tired eye, has to me been for ever destroyed by the unsightly structures raised therein; freaks in bricks and mortar these, caprices in building to laugh at, were it not a matter to grieve about, this ruthless spoiling of scenery. How sadly these prosaic structures contrast with the poems in buildings that our ancestors loved to raise, in a benighted age, when men had their houses fashioned to suit their individual tastes, not as now run up by contract in whole streets, rows, and terraces, as like

to one another as peas in a pod, and as undesirable to live in as to look upon, the man of to-day having to fit into his dwelling like a hermit crab as best he may. An old-time home, with its many high-pitched gables, clustering stacks of chimneys, tiled irregular roofs, mullioned windows (so pleasantly varied by transom and quarrelled glass), half-timber fronts, projecting upper stories (when needed), weathertiling, and ample porches that almost speak a welcome; an old-time home like this is as delightful to gaze upon as any painted picture, and more so than a great many.

A man with no taste may furnish the interior of his house so that it is unutterably vulgar and eyeirritating to the cultivated mind, but this the public do not see and it only affects the owner and his friends; but the exterior of a house more or less concerns everybody, for this becomes a part of the landscape, and either adds to or takes from its beauty. In a thickly-populated country like England, whose scenery is so closely associated with the homes of the people, it is terrible to think how much it is in the power of unsympathetic man to rob it of its traditional loveliness.

Leaving Herongate we skirted a finely wooded park (said to be the largest in the county) in which stands the deserted and ruined mansion of Thorndon Hall, the former seat of Lord Petre. Shortly after passing this we reached Brentwood. Here we baited our horses at the White Hart, a very ancient inn, one of the oldest coaching hostelries now existing in England, one that before the

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railway age must have seen much coming and going and have been full of life and bustle, situated as it was on the high road to the important towns of Chelmsford, Ipswich, and Colchester, to say nothing of Yarmouth and places of lesser fame.

The White Hart at Brentwood contains an excellent example of the arcaded courtyard that forms such a delightful feature in the hostels of that period, an arrangement happily combining both utility and picturesqueness. These ample courtyards (a necessity of the time) with their rambling outbuildings, their wealth of stabling, have a special attraction for me, they have such a genuine old-time flavour and are so suggestive of the poetry and romance of the days gone by.

The ostler here we found to be an old man, and like the rest of his class inclined to be communicative, so we led him on to tell us all he knew about the place. We soon discovered that he was one of the ever-narrowing circle of those who were ostlers in the coaching age. Yes, sir,' he said to us in reply to a remark of ours, 'it be a queer rambling building, that it be. I remember it well when I were a boy, and most of the coaches on the road used to change horses here. It were "four up" or "four down," all day long, there weren't much quiet then; plenty to do and plenty to get for that matter, for the tips came pretty often. Seventy-two coaches passed the old house in the twenty-four hours; them was lively times. I can well remember when fifty coach-horses and upwards were kept in these stables, besides fifteen "posters," and post-boys booted and spurred