"Capability Brown" laid his rude, rough hand upon the grounds, but you
can still see the "prosed alcove" mentioned by Cowper, a wooden
summer-house, much injured
By rural carvers, who with knives deface
The panels, leaving an obscure rude name.
Sometimes, alas! the old house has to vanish entirely through old age.
It cannot maintain its struggle any longer. The rain pours through the
roof and down the insides of the walls. And the family is as decayed
as their mansion, and has no money wherewith to defray the cost of
reparation.
[Illustration: The Wardrobe House. The Close. Salisbury. Evening.]
Our artist, Mr. Fred Roe, in his search for the picturesque, had one
sad and deplorable experience, which he shall describe in his own
words:--
"One of the most weird and, I may add, chilling experiences in
connection with the decline of county families which it was my lot
to experience, occurred a year or two ago in a remote corner of
the eastern counties. I had received, through a friend, an
invitation to visit an old mansion before the inmates (descendants
of the owners in Elizabethan times) left and the contents were
dispersed. On a comfortless January morning, while rain and sleet
descended in torrents to the accompaniment of a biting wind, I
detrained at a small out-of-the-way station in ----folk.
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