This appears conclusive, and, if it isn't, here we are at the House. Blackmeer Hall. Elizabethan, apparently.

    WITHIN—THE HOUSEKEEPER—WINDOWS—INFORMATION—THE ORIEL—VIEW—FLOOR—MILBURD'S INQUIRY—TYPICAL DEVELOPMENT—MATERIAL—AN EXAMPLE—CRONE—POOR—MEDITATIONS—THE FRESCO—TAPESTRY—ARMOUR—MICE—RATS—THE GHOST.

    n

   old woman curtseys, and ushers our party into the Hall itself, which is lofty and spacious, but in a mildewy condition.

   The floor is partly stone partly tiles, as if the original designer had been, in his day, uncertain whether to make a roof of it, or not.

   A fine old chimney, with a hearth for logs, and dogs, is at one end, and reminds me of retainers, deer hounds, oxen roasted whole, and Christmas revels in the olden time.

   The windows are diamond-paned. To open in compartments.

   The old woman tells us that this was rebuilt in fifteen

   hundred and fifty-two, and then she shows us into the drawing-room.

   This is a fine apartment with an Oriel window, giving on to a lawn of rank and tangled grass. Beyond this chaos of green, is a well timbered covert, dense as a small black forest.

   The distance between the trees becoming greater to the left of the plantation, we obtain a glimpse of the lake which we passed on our road.

   There is another grand fire-place in this room. The wainscot wants patching up, and so does the parqueted floor.

   The old woman tells us that “they say as Queen Elizabeth was once here.”

   Milburd asks seriously, “Do you recollect her, ma'am?”

   The crone wags her head and replies “that it was afore her time.”

   Mentioning the word Crone to Boodels, I ask him what relation it bears to ‘Cronie.’ “‘Cronie,’ almost obsolete now, means ‘a familiar friend,’” I explain to him. He says thank you, and supposes that the two words have nothing in common except sound.

   The notion being in fact part of my scheme for

    Typical Developments

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