[Illustration: Detail of Seventeenth-century Table in Milton's
Cottage, Chalfont St. Giles]
It was reported that an American purchaser had been more successful at
Ipswich, where in 1907 a Tudor house and corner-post, it was said, had
been secured by a London firm for shipment to America. We are glad to
hear that this report was incorrect, that the purchaser was an English
lord, who re-erected the house in his park.
Wanton destruction is another cause of the disappearance of old
mansions. Fashions change even in house-building. Many people prefer
new lamps to old ones, though the old ones alone can summon genii and
recall the glories of the past, the associations of centuries of
family life, and the stories of ancestral prowess. Sometimes fashion
decrees the downfall of old houses. Such a fashion raged at the
beginning of the last century, when every one wanted a brand-new house
built after the Palladian style; and the old weather-beaten pile that
had sheltered the family for generations, and was of good old English
design with nothing foreign or strange about it, was compelled to give
place to a new-fangled dwelling-place which was neither beautiful nor
comfortable. Indeed, a great wit once advised the builder of one of
these mansions to hire a room on the other side of the road and spend
his days looking at his Palladian house, but to be sure not to live
there.
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