"The greatest advantages men have by riches are to give, to build, to plant, and make pleasant scenes." So wrote Sir William Temple, diplomatist, philosopher, and true garden-lover. And many of the gentlemen of England seem to have been of the same mind, if we may judge from the number of delightful old country-houses set amid pleasant scenes that time and war and fire have spared to us. Macaulay draws a very unflattering picture of the old country squire, as of the parson. His untruths concerning the latter I have endeavoured to expose in another place.[37] The manor-houses themselves declare the historian's strictures to be unfounded. Is it possible that men so ignorant and crude could have built for themselves residences bearing evidence of such good taste, so full of grace and charm, and surrounded by such rare blendings of art and nature as are displayed so often in park and garden? And it is not, as a rule, in the greatest mansions, the vast piles erected by the great nobles of the Court, that we find such artistic qualities, but most often in the smaller manor-houses of knights and squires. Certainly many higher-cultured people of Macaulay's time and our own could learn a great deal from them of the art of making beautiful homes.
[37] _Old-time Parson_, by P.H. Ditchfield, 1908.
[Illustration: Gothic Chimney, Norton St. Philip, Somerset]
Holinshed, the Chronicler, writing during the third quarter of the sixteenth century, makes some illuminating observations on the increasing preference shown in his time for stone and brick buildings in place of timber and plaster. He wrote:--
"The ancient maners and houses of our gentlemen are yet for the most part of strong timber. How beit such as be lately buylded are commonly either of bricke or harde stone, their rowmes large and stately, and houses of office farder distant fro their lodgings. Those of the nobilitie are likewise wrought with bricke and harde stone, as provision may best be made; but so magnificent and stately, as the basest house of a barren doth often match with some honours of princes in olde tyme: so that if ever curious buylding did flourishe in Englande it is in these our dayes, wherein our worckemen excel and are in maner comparable in skill with old Vitruvius and Serle."